The Washington Post's Jim Tankersley today gave the George Soros-funded liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) 14 paragraphs of puffy coverage devoted to CAP's tax-heavy plan "aimed at recharging the U.S. economy." The liberal wish list is "meant to boost beleaguered middle-class workers," Tankersley noted.
In his June 13 story headlined "Plan aims to accelerate economy," the Post economic policy correspondent hailed how "The 250-page report, '300 Million Engines of Growth,' appears to be the most comprehensive effort yet by a think tank of any ideology to bridge what was the most glaring economic policy divide of the 2012 election." Tankersley then gushed that "[t]he core of the plan is the notion that economies grow and thrive best when prosperity is broadly shared." Yeah, you know where this is going, but Tankersley waited until the 8th paragraph (out of a 14-paragraph story) to note that it comes with, wait for it, "a parade of new or increased taxes" such as:
...on the carbon emissions from power plants, on financial transactions on Wall Street, on dividends and capital gains income, and even on the profits from the “big five oil companies.” CAP officials said they had not calculated the total amount of the tax increases contained in the plan.
Hmm, taxing dividends and capital gains doesn't seem like a way to fuel 300 million engines of economic growth. To the contrary, it sounds like a way to nibble into the private wealth that middle-class Americans can create by saving and investing in the stock market. Tankersley, however, failed to find someone to slam the tax hikes in the CAP proposal.
Although Tankersley confessed that "[s]ome of the proposals are pulled straight from President Obama's agenda," he only briefly turned to a conservative critique of the plan in the final paragraph, quoting Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute who hit CAP's call to raise the minimum wage and index it against inflation such that it never would fall "below half the average wage at current levels."
