I’ll admit it.  I didn’t see any of this coming.

When I was watching that last presidential debate and McCain started talking about Joe the Plumber, I just rolled my eyes.  Honestly, I was kind of sick of these “I met a real person once” stories that keep popping up in the debates.  “Hey, I’m a Senator, but once upon a time I met a guy who worked at McDonalds, and you’ll never believe this, but he doesn’t have health insurance and his life sucks.”

Thank you Studs Terkel.

As soon as all this Joe the Plumber nonsense started, all I could think was “here we go again, we’re going to have to have a ‘good-ol-boy-off.’  McCain’s going to throw a pair of plumbers on the table and Obama’s going to have to counter with two electricians, a factory worker and a pair of home health aides. 
But, no.  Joe the plumber came up again and again and again.  In fact, McCain mentioned him 21 times in the debate and Obama referenced him at least half a dozen.  No one talked about nuclear proliferation, immigration, our surprisingly new BFF status with North Korea, or our crumbling infrastructure, but some guy who roto rooters your commode?  Half the debate.

I remember sitting after the debate listening to Tom “marbles mouth” Brokaw talking about how “Joe the Plumber won the debate” and thinking two things. 

One – that every reporter in America was trying to find Joe and that this poor guy was about to get 500 phone calls and wake up to a pack of satellite trucks on his lawn.  And

Two – that I couldn’t wait until this asinine story ran its length and died in a couple of days.

Boy was I wrong.

Of all the wacky, unimportant, misleading stories of the campaign:  Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, the Keating 5, McCains’ alleged affair, Bristol’s pregnancy, Acorn, flag pins, and on and on, how has the plumber thing been the story with legs?  The McCain campaign brings him up at every single rally.  And they even expanded it to Bob the teacher and Fred the UPS driver and Ingrid the exotic dancer.

How has this guy become the Republican rallying cry?

I’ve got a number of problems with all of this.  The first problem is that the phrase “Joe the plumber” annoys the crap out of me.  Somehow soccer moms, Nascar Dads, and Joe Six Pack have become part of our national voting consciousness, and it just seems really goofy.  (Especially Joe Six Pack.  Since when did alcoholics become a demographic we were all trying to woo?  Or have I misunderstood and we’re really talking about guys who have good abs.  I would much rather have our national candidates trying to go after that Joe Six Pack.   Then they could also go after Robert the Really Ripped and Susie Good Gams.)

But most of all, I resent the disingenuousness of it all.  Clearly the ploy is this:  Joe is a plumber, thus, he’s a blue collar working class good old guy, and he’s going to vote for McCain because Obama said that he was going to raise his taxes.  Thus, Obama is going to raise taxes on all blue collar working class good old guys.

This is of course absolutely, categorically false.  Otherwise known as a lie.

Obama is only raising taxes (from 36% - 39%) on people who earn more than $250,000 a year.  This includes virtually no plumbers.  I know we all joke about how much plumbers charge (hardy har har) but none of them make a quarter of a million dollars.  Most doctors and lawyers don’t make that.  In fact, good old Joe Wurzelbacher only made about $40,000 last year (enough to qualify for an additional $1,000 tax cut under Obama, which by the by he’s going to need since he owes $1,200 in back taxes.  No wonder he’s worried about whether his taxes are going to get raised, he really really doesn’t like paying them)   And even if Joe did own his company that made about $280,000 last year, unless all of his employees were volunteers, he would be taking home a lot less than $250,000 after he paid them and he still wouldn’t have to pay higher taxes.

It is ridiculous to assert that Joe the Plumber or his buddy Paul the Pest Control Guy would do better under John McCain.  It bugs me that the McCain camp continues to distort all of this to make it seem like Obama is taxing people making $40,000.  (to be fair it also bugs me that Obama is mis-representing McCains health plan as a tax increase, when all experts agree it would be a net gain for most people – McCain’s health plan is ineffective enough without distorting it).

The reason it bugs me is that there is a very genuine and sincere difference in tax policy between the two candidates.  McCain believes that the best way to help the economy is to offer more tax breaks to the wealthy, since they are the ones who are most likely to create jobs through the businesses they own.  The way to limit the deficit growth is through capping all spending except entitlements (because you can’t) and military.  This is a legitimate economic theory.  I don’t think there’s much proof that it actually works all that well (see the last 8 years as an example), but it is a view held by a number of smart people.

This obviously differs from the Obama belief which is that the middle class is the engine of the country and could therefore use a tax break in difficult times.  Also, while spending cuts are needed, in the long run, our country will benefit greatly from reformed health care policy, greater access to college, fixing our infrastructure, increasing funding for our schools and moving away from an oil based economy.  These things require funding.  And the only way to get more funding is to increase the national debt or increase tax revenue.  After 8 years of rampant, irresponsible deficit spending we cannot afford to increase our debt more, so the only solution is higher taxes, but on who?  I personally think that a marginal (3%) tax increase on those who make over $250,000 who had their taxes drastically cut under Bush, is a perfectly reasonable, appropriate and fiscally sound thing to do.

These are two well reasoned but wildly different economic policies.  Why can’t we argue them for what they are?  There is no question that the McCain camp is aggressively and falsely trying to communicate that regular Joes (plumbers, six packs, or otherwise) would have their taxes raised under Obama.  Why can’t he just argue his own plan?  Why does he need to lie about Obama’s?  Is it because he realizes that while his plan greatly helps the wealthy, it does nothing to help the poor and middle class?  Does he fear that if his middle class supporters truly understood his policy that they would realize that it was not in their best interest?

The last thing I want to gripe about (and I promise tomorrow I’ll write about poop or a funny thing my kid said or something) is this whole “spreading the wealth around” nonsense.  What does that mean?  If it means taxing the wealthy at a higher rate than the poor, then do you think McCain realizes that this is, and has been, the entire basis of our progressive tax code for most of the last century?

I also wonder, do all of those people waving signs at McCain rallies that say “I’m Joe the Plumber” realize that they would be the ones that this “wealth” would be “spread to?”

I absolutely believe that those people who make over $250,000 a year should have to pay a larger portion of their earnings to the government.  The government does a lot of wonderful things for our country (driven on any roads lately?) and taking an extra $10,000 from someone who makes $600,000 is a lot more fair (in my crazy, liberal, what Jesus would do) mind than taking an extra $1,000 from someone who makes $20,000.

Again, it’s a fair difference of opinion.  Why can’t we discuss it honestly?  Why must we couch it in the belief that Obama will take your money and use it to buy tofu, gun locks, and RU486?

It bothers me, because I don’t like to see people being duped.  When a trucker says “I don’t want Obama to take my money and give it to someone else.”  He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Among other things, he doesn’t realize that he would be on the receiving end, instead of the giving end.  This bugs me.

If the trucker said, “I don’t believe it is fair to tax the wealthy more than the poor and I am personally willing to pay higher taxes to ensure an equitable tax system,” then that’s a legitimate policy difference, because let me tell ya, taxes have to be raised somewhere.

We are 10 trillion dollars in debt and somebody needs to pay for that.  And there’s not enough bridges to nowhere or Cincinnatti (same diff) in the national budget that can be cut to make up the difference.

At some point, some generation will have to start paying off the government credit card debt of the last 50 years.  Chances are it will have to be a Democrat who does it since Republicans never want to raise taxes and always add to the deficit.  (Again, the last 8 years, or heck, 30) 

So who’s going to pay for the spending of the past?  Joe the Plumber or Joe the Plutocrat? 

Or, if we’re not careful, all of us Joes.  And we’ll pay with more than taxes.  We’ll pay with our children’s future.

Damn, that seems ominous.

So let me leave you with something happier as a reward for reading through my 3 page diatribe on tax policy.

Yesterday I was stuck in traffic in Virginia (you’ll be happy to know I didn’t call 911) and I was behind a woman whose license plate read:

GETCRPN

Now, I thought about this for a long time and could only come up with one reasonable possibility.  As I got closer to her van, I noted that she had a small sticker advertising her scrapbooking business.

Now here’s my advice to all of you scrapbooking entrepeneuers out there.  The S is very important on your license plate.  Any of these would be fine alternatives:

GETSCRP

GTSCRPN

SCRPBKN

GTSKPBN

But if your license plate says “GETCRPN” you just told America to GET CRAPPIN!

And, during a political season, we don’t need any more of that then we’ve already got.