Novak: Ask Obama to define “loophole”

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Robert Novak makes a mockery of his retirement — thankfully — with an observation about Barack Obama and his populist rhetoric on tax policy. When John McCain pressed Obama to explain how he would pay for the hundreds of billions in new spending Obama proposes without raising taxes broadly, Obama said he would “close loopholes” to recover the revenue. Novak doesn’t think Obama can define “loophole”, at least not broadly enough to find over $300 billion a year in revenues:

How would Barack Obama pay for the $800 billion that John McCain claimed in the first presidential debate Sept. 26 in Oxford, Miss., that his Democratic opponent would spend if he were elected president? Obama replied, by “closing tax loopholes.”

Obama was no more specific in the debate, and tax experts doubt that structural changes without increasing taxes can raise anything close to that amount of money. …

Obama has made clear that he would try to roll back President Bush’s tax cuts, but that does not come under the definition of a “loophole.” A loophole consists of a conniving tax attorney discovering a weakness in the Internal Revenue Code or such a weakness intentionally legislated by Congress under the instigation of crafty lobbyists. The only specific tax legislation contained in Obama’s paper would raise the capital gains rate for most shareholders, restore taxation on dividend income to pre-Bush standards and restore the full estate tax.