Neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are going to give John McCain a run for his money with fiscal conservatives. Indeed, it may be that in an economic downturn their proposals sound even worse.

Obama in an interview yesterday on CNBC said he would raise the capital gains tax (the exact amount to be determined later), raise the top marginal individual income tax rate to 39%, raise the cap on social security taxes (currently $102,000), raise taxes on “dirty energy” like coal ( Did they know about this in Ohio? Are they listening in West Virginia?), and hike a few others (e.g. death tax, dividends). The only question he wouldn’t answer is whether he is a “liberal,” instead declaring that “My attitude is that I believe in the market, I believe in entrepreneurship, I believe in opportunity, I believe in capitalism and I want to do what works. . . But what I want to make sure of is it works for all America and not just a small sliver of America.” (Perhaps someone should tell him that capitalism requires capital.)

Obama has repeatedly said that he would raise income taxes only on those making more than $75,000. Americans For Tax Reform provided me with this interesting statistical information :

According to the IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin, the top 20% of households earn more than $75,000 in Adjusted Gross Income. This represents about 30 million households. A good guess would be about 100 million affected Americans. (The source for this is also IRS-SO.) The top 20% of income earners (that is, those earning $75,000 or more) pay nearly 90% of all federal income taxes (Source: Tax Foundation).

Interestingly in a debate last November Hillary Clinton took exception with the notion that Obama’s plan to raise the social security tax cap (then $97,500) would only impact the rich. She said that “it is absolutely the case that there are people who would find that burdensome. I represent firefighters. I represent school supervisors. I’m not talking — and, you know, it’s different parts of the country. So you have to look at this across the board and the numbers are staggering.” She also said that she does “not want to fix the problems of Social Security on the backs of middle-class families and seniors. If you lift the cap completely, that is a $1 trillion tax increase. I don’t think we need to do that.” (So if $97,500 isn’t rich then one supposes she agrees with McCain and his advisors today who asserted that $75,000 isn’t rich either.)

But Clinton is no role model for free marketers. The New York Times may kvell over her mastery of health care policy, but she declared in an interview that she’s going to cap health care insurance at 5 to 10% of individuals’ earnings and require all insurers to cover consumers regardless of health status or age. But what if insurers can’t do this ( i.e. suppose it costs more than 10% of the average American’s salary to insure them, especially the sick people)? Ah, not to worry: “Government insurance similar to Medicare would be available to all consumers.” And of course, those taxes increases she would enact to pay for this aren’t tax increases. Rolling back the Bush tax cuts “should not be rightly labeled as a tax increase,” she says, since they will expire in 2011.

Perhaps McCain won’t be disadvantaged on domestic policy after all.