@ Artillery - Obama afaik only promised no tax increase for the poor/medium class, not an across-the-board tax decrease; I think it was more McCain’s idea. Besides, with the current state of the economy I doubt McCain could have kept all his proposals if he were president.
As for the F-22… I’m no longer very familiar with the issue, but it seems to me that there is something to keep in mind here. It is a high-tech, high-cost plane designed to excel against modern, moderately high-tech planes - from the Su 27 and MiG 29 and the Mirage 2000 on. At that role, it is most likely a very good aircraft, though whether the best for its money is something for the true experts to debate. In a war with Russia, China or India, it would probably do fairly well, I suppose.
However, the last few conflicts the US was engaged in were asymmetric wars where the US faced little enemy aviation - it was basically nonexistent in Afghanistan and negligible in Iraq; even in Kosovo the NATO achieved aerial supremacy fairly quickly. In the last 2 wars, the majority of the air operations afaik were ground support missions, where the advantages of the F-22 were limited. These wars were something that drones, helicopters, or attack aircraft such as the venerable A-10 are much more useful for. I do not know if stopping the F-22 was the right move, but given the experience of the last 15 years focusing only on high-tech, air superiority aircraft does not work for many of the situations where the US fights.
@ Artillery - Obama afaik only promised no tax increase for the poor/medium class, not an across-the-board tax decrease; I think it was more McCain’s idea. Besides, with the current state of the economy I doubt McCain could have kept all his proposals if he were president.
As for the F-22… I’m no longer very familiar with the issue, but it seems to me that there is something to keep in mind here. It is a high-tech, high-cost plane designed to excel against modern, moderately high-tech planes - from the Su 27 and MiG 29 and the Mirage 2000 on. At that role, it is most likely a very good aircraft, though whether the best for its money is something for the true experts to debate. In a war with Russia, China or India, it would probably do fairly well, I suppose.
However, the last few conflicts the US was engaged in were asymmetric wars where the US faced little enemy aviation - it was basically nonexistent in Afghanistan and negligible in Iraq; even in Kosovo the NATO achieved aerial supremacy fairly quickly. In the last 2 wars, the majority of the air operations afaik were ground support missions, where the advantages of the F-22 were limited. These wars were something that drones, helicopters, or attack aircraft such as the venerable A-10 are much more useful for. I do not know if stopping the F-22 was the right move, but given the experience of the last 15 years focusing only on high-tech, air superiority aircraft does not work for many of the situations where the US fights.