Obama's $300 billion in tax cuts seen attracting Republican votes to stimulus package

Posted Jan 6th 2009 1:45PM by Joseph Lazzaro
Filed under: Forecasts, Politics, Recession

He's a new Dem and you can tell. He's also a smart professional.

Those inside the beltway expecting President-elect Barack Obama to be a carbon copy of President Bill Clinton are likely to be in for a surprise. Obama has shown a penchant to reach out -- and to reach out quick -- to forge coalitions.

The semi-circle of debate

Moreover, "you can see his style," so says economist Peter Dawson. "It's a variation of the Harvard Law School seminar model," Dawson said. And the initial evidence bears Dawson out: Obama has shown a tendency to assemble smart people around him from a variety of viewpoints, encouraging rigorous debate with opposing arguments, move forth with the value that every one counts in U.S. society, and then forge a viable solution based on the above, with solutions tailored to meet the task/challenge.

"What Republicans have to keep in mind is that Obama's 'everybody counts' also includes the poor and the working poor," Dawson said. "What Democrats have to keep in mind is that it also means investors and corporate America."

One classic example of the Obama style: the proposed $700-$850 billion fiscal stimulus package, Dawson said. Obama has moved quickly to incorporate $300 billion in tax cuts/incentives into the plan, a great way to attract certain Republicans, he said.

"Tax relief is a top priority among many Republicans, it's a good tactic to stimulate economic growth, and a group of Republican Senators, maybe more than 10 or 15, is likely to respond favorably to the stimulus package as a result. That makes passage more likely," Dawson said. "So in the stimulus plan we can see Obama's best ideas/encompassing style."

Other aspects of stimulus package likely to attract Republicans (if included in the final plan): company tax credits for retaining or hiring employees, related investment tax credits and/or accelerated depreciation for equipment, he said.

Fiscal Policy/ Economic Analysis: Indeed, as President-elect Obama said often during the campaign: the monopoly on good ideas does not belong to a single party. If Obama continues to incorporate ideas based on their effectiveness, not primarily on partisan concerns, up ahead there will be many policy successes and solutions to current problems in these United States.

Tags: Congress, Democrats, fiscal stimulus package, Obama, Republicans, tax cuts

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-29-2009 @ 8:49PM

Peter said...

I was hoping that capital loss limit of $3000 be increased to adjust for all the years since its incorporation in the stimulus package. Taxpayers would like to clean up their balance sheets too! They would get a tax break sooner and in the long run its a net wash in terms of total capital losses to be written off.