The Wall Street Journal opines on the possible agenda of a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives

The Journal had an interesting and level-headed editorial this morning on what the likely agenda will be if the Democrats do gain control of the House. The editorial points out that the Party has not really laid out any plans, quoting one Dem leader saying "why take the focus off the Republicans"?

One of the potential proposals is so-called "Medicare for All" which would open up participation in Medicare to everyone (financing it with additional payroll taxes of 1.7% on employees and 7% tax on employers). This was originally proposed in the late 80’s, early 90’s by Bush I as a way of covering people without insurance, but never went anywhere in the Democrat controlled Congress. A good idea then, now possibly co-opted by the Dems. I fully expect that at some point in the next few years they will suddenly come up with "People Power Social Security" (or some such name) in which the Party of Roosevelt updates social security to allow people to hold personal accounts with ownership rights. A terrible idea (according to today’s Democrats) under Bush will suddenly start to make sense when they’re in power.

I guess that’s politics.

Here’s the article with a small excerpt on taxes: The Non-Contract with America OpinionJournal – Hot Topic

The Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, and any chance that they’ll be made permanent will vanish with a Democratic Congress. The question is whether Democrats will try to raise taxes even sooner. Most Democrats voted against the Bush tax cuts, but this week Ms. Pelosi said on CNBC’s "Kudlow & Co." that "Democrats like tax cuts. We support middle-class tax cuts."

The same isn’t true, however, for the "investor" tax cuts of 2003 that coincided with the acceleration of the current expansion. Ms. Pelosi says reversing these tax cuts "at the high end" would be "an earlier resort." This would raise the top income and dividend tax rate back to 39.6% from 35%, and the capital-gains rate back to 20% from 15%, substantially raising the cost of new investment in the United States. Economist John Rutledge estimates that raising the dividend rate alone would reduce the value of the S&P 500 stocks by between 5% and 8.5%, roughly a $500 to $700 billion decline in the wealth of the 52% of American households that own stock.