Reply #75: What were the tax rates and brackets before Clinton's big tax bill?

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I'd be surprised if he didn't make the rates and brackets more progressive.

Furthermore, asking for 5c more per gallon for gas doesn't neccessarily raise prices. Retailers still have to price at a level that responds to supply and demand and gives them reasonable profit margins. If their profit margins were outrageous and consumers are price sensitive, they'd just take it out of profits.

Also, remember in 99, was it, when gas was 1 buck per gallon? That was the price going down dispite the 5 c tax. And clearly gas prices moved all over the place. Just because the middle class were paying some of that tax, it's not clear that they wouldn't have been paying lower prices but for the tax. Note that there are very few itmes which are priced as elastically as gas. Haven't we had this discussion before?

As for me having a problem understanding Dean's tax policies, you'd have to have a lobotomy before you'd think that Dean's tax plan wasn't outrageously out of step with the way real Democrats feel about tax policy.