Obama seeks Ohio’s blue-collar vote:
Barack Obama on Monday made an aggressive pitch at Ohio's blue-collar workers by proposing a "Patriot Employers" plan that would lower corporate taxes for companies that did not ship jobs overseas.
Mr Obama's plan would lower the corporate tax rate for companies that met criteria including maintaining their headquarters in the US, maintaining or increasing their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce, holding a neutral position in union drives among their employees and providing decent healthcare.
Mr Obama's plan met instant scepticism from otherwise sympathetic Democratic economists who said it would require a large regulatory apparatus to put into practice.
No, no, no. Come on!
Is Senator Obama really proposing codifying into law "holding a neutral position in union drives"—whatever that means—as a basis for determining your effective tax rate? On its economic merits, the plan is terrible, but is it even good politics? This puzzling proposal, this refuge of regulation, is surely not implementable.
Update: This speech mirrors a bill introduced this summer, The Patriot Employer Act of 2007, which provides "a tax credit to companies that make a commitment to American workers."
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