Recently, Dr. Laurie T. Johnson of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) critiqued The Heritage Foundation's analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (H.R. 2454, "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009").
The new White House proposal to impose a Medicare tax on investment income would reduce demand for investment, which is the last thing that the economy needs right now.
The global warming policy debate is increasing the calls forreduction of carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions. The proposal to allow the EPA to broadly regulate emissions under theClean Air Act will impose higher costs on U.S. industries, leadingto slower economic growth and lower employment. This will causedecreased productivity of U.S. industries and lower returns onequity.
The results in this paper are based on the specific tax policy proposals of Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. The economy improves under each plan as compared to the CBO baselinethat assumes that all of the Bush tax cuts disappear. While bothcandidates plan to reduce taxes compared to this scenario and eachachieves his stated goal, their approaches are quite different.