Just how much would a Hillary Clinton administration raise taxes?

It depends on who you ask, and lately, it also depends on when you ask. Mrs. Clinton has previously touted her version of fiscal responsibility, “I have a million ideas. I can’t do all of them. I happen to think in running a disciplined campaign - especially when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is what I’m trying to do - everything I propose I have to pay for.”

Today, Team Clinton unveiled her “economic blueprint” which would include an additional $820 billion in taxes over the next decade, aimed at oil companies, drug companies, and corporations which “ship jobs overseas.” This is in addition to allowing the Bush tax cuts expire, which would increase taxes by a staggering $4.3 Trillion, according to estimates provided by the National Women’sLaw Center.

Do the math.

Hillary Clinton is proposing $5.1 trillion in new taxes over the next decade.

Since she is proposing new spending programs to match the tax increases, the growth of Federal spending poised to grow dramatically under a Clinton Administration.

Update: So, where are the pro-growth groups when you need them? Glad you asked. They’re still attacking Republicans.

Hillary and the band.

(*watch at your own risk.)

from NYT, via Free Republic…

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest.

Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to some Republican colleagues.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain went on to develop an amiable if professionally calculated relationship. They took more official trips together, including to Iraq. They worked together on the Senate Armed Services Committee and on the issue of global warming. They made a joint appearance last year on “Meet the Press,” interacting so congenially that the moderator, Tim Russert, joked about their forming a “fusion ticket.”

Politics being what it is, there is more friction than fusion. As the 2008 presidential campaign begins to take shape, with Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton at the top of the polls for their parties’ nominations, they are increasingly underscoring their differences on issues like the war in Iraq and port security. Advisers to Mr. McCain have put a stop to his inviting Mrs. Clinton on trips.

Whether their friendship is based on anything other than the respect of one political professional for another, or the opportunity to strike a tone of bipartisanship for public consumption, is unclear. But the interplay between the two senators, both well known and both with compelling personal narratives and a knack for infuriating their own parties’ bases, could determine the tone of the 2008 presidential race and make it less personally vicious than the last two campaigns.

Read more

Obama’s 25 point victory over Mrs. Clinton marks six straight. I’m going to file this under “who’d a thunk it?”

No, it’s not over yet. But, it sure is starting to feel like it.

For many of us on the Right, there is a bit of Hillaryfreude. Watching Doyle and Henry resign, and Maggie (Vince Foster) Williams take over Team Hillary, brings back memories of everything we loathe about the Clinton machine. Still, if Senator Gravitas is able to hold off Hillary’s last firewall in Texas and Ohio, think of all the opposition research that will go to waste.

I guess it’s time to get busy putting together the Obama File. Please feel free to post your best links.

Fairfax, Va. (CNSNews.com) - In advance of today’s Potomac Primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., former President Bill Clinton led a rally for his wife’s campaign at George Mason University Monday night. […]

The “first thing that you want in a president is somebody who will keep big bad things from happening,” President Clinton told the crowd at GMU. A president must also “make sure good things happen.” The former president said the nation needs a “change-maker, and she’s been one all of her life.”

The president emphasized that he would support his wife’s candidacy, even if he were not married to her — because of her position on issues and her record as “a change-maker” over the past 35 years. [ed. note: Drink!]

The Democrats are running on a platitudinous platform of “hope” and “change.” It is, in many ways, no different than the Congressional races of 2006, except that surrendering in Iraq is no longer a priority. Democrat Congressional candidates ran on no platform then, and they are running on no platform now.