It is the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s dramatic landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln where, in front of that massive “Mission Accomplished” banner, he declared “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” They have not, of course. And it has me thinking about how those of us who do not have loved ones in combat operations are sacrificing nothing for this conflict.

Much of the reaction to the April 16 Democratic Presidential debate was directed at the moderators for focusing on character and perception rather than policy. But issues got mangled as well—not only by the candidates, but by moderator Charles Gibson. While questioning Barack Obama about his proposal to raise the capital gains tax, Gibson claimed that when the rate has been cut, government took in more money, but when the tax was increased revenue fell. Although this argument warms the hearts of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the implication that capital gains tax rate cuts raise revenues is not supported by the evidence.

Props to Barack Obama for resisting the siren call for a summer gas tax holiday. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has clambered aboard John McCain’s free-lunch bandwagon, vowing to support the gas tax cut he first proposed a couple of weeks ago. Even worse, she’s now tied it to an energy company windfall profits tax so, as she says, oil companies would “pay their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”

There are few things more frustrating in life than being a budget hawk. You spend your days predicting dire consequences that never quite come to pass, trying to convince voters that their government can’t keep expanding popular programs without paying for them, and hectoring politicians into making votes that would be political suicide. Like Cassandra of Greek myth, you have the ability to foretell the future, but suffer the curse of being unable to change it.

While most observers are focused on John McCain’s proposed summer gas tax holiday, they have missed a much bigger idea from GOP’s likely presidential nominee: A massive tax reform—but one that, at least as it stands now, would be a huge windfall for business.

On April 17, the Tax Policy Center posted “Scoring McCain’s Tax Proposals”. Although I remain a fan of efforts by organizations like the Tax Policy Center to analyze taxation issues, the analysis is misleading on the whole and wrong in some particulars.

In their debate last night, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wandered deep into George H.W. Bush land by pledging never to raise taxes on “middle-income” taxpayers making less than $250,000.

Senator McCain wants to make government much, much smaller. His specifics on how are sketchy—eliminate earmarks, programs that don’t work, waste… But his tax day speech gives us an idea of how much he wants to shrink the government. A lot. And even more than when we last blogged on the subject back in February.

Senator McCain proposed today to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal excise tax on gasoline between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year. For a moment, forget about whether encouraging fossil fuel burning makes sense during a time of global warming, whether we should raid the highway trust fund when bridges are collapsing for lack of maintenance, or the disconnect between the proposal to cut gasoline taxes and the candidates’ endorsement of “cap-and-trade” limits that would raise gasoline prices.

To celebrate April 15, TPC director Len Burman argued yesterday on TaxVox that today’s income tax “is not all bad” and that “we could do a lot worse.” Well, it may not be all bad, but it is pretty awful. And while we could do worse, we could also do a lot better.