President Obama is grasping at straws. He’s desperate to do something about the wretched economy before the November elections. He’s proposing some temporary business tax cuts, while allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and raising taxes on energy companies.
Fox News: President Obama, in one of his most dramatic gestures to business, will propose that companies be allowed to write off 100 percent of their new investment in plant and equipment through 2011, a plan that White House economists say would cut business taxes by nearly $200 billion over two years.
The proposal, to be laid out Wednesday in a speech in Cleveland, tops a raft of announcements, from a proposed expansion of the research and experimentation tax credit to $50 billion in additional spending on roads, railways and runways. But unlike those two ideas, both familiar from Obama’s 2008 campaign, the investment incentive would embrace a long-held wish by conservative economists that had never won support from either Republican or Democratic administrations.
Will this work? Probably not. Stuart Varney explains in the video below. Many say the $50 billion in stimulus is nothing but another gift to the unions. Varney said no new jobs will be created right away and that since we don’t know any specifics, how do we know they won’t simply funnel money to “green companies” or other pet projects? He also pointed out that the economy is spiraling down, and so are Obama’s poll numbers. That’s why he’s suddenly so desperate to look like he’s doing something about the economy.
