Campaign 2012
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Steve Chapman writes that President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Rick Santorum agree about the wrong thing, and that by easing the tax burden of manufacturers at the expense of other companies, politicians encourage the superstition that the former are more valuable than the latter.
Barack Obama and Rick Santorum probably couldn't agree that August falls in summer, but on one important issue they are closer than the Winklevoss twins. Both regard manufacturing as precious beyond words, and both think the federal government should be making special efforts to promote it.
Obama favors an array of tax breaks to induce manufacturers to keep jobs in the United States, and Santorum wants to completely scrap the corporate income tax on companies in this particular sector.
"Everybody benefits when manufacturing is going strong," said the president. Santorum recently lamented, "We have the manufacturing sector of the economy when I was growing up that was 21 percent of the workforce. It's now nine."
