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Besides being a life-long registered Republican, I am also a mature, middle-class, small-town, white, married Christian mother of three, who hunts and eats deer meat. Add farming roots and thirty years of work in a non-union manufacturing company based in a conservative community, and the profile places me firmly in the pollsters’ McCain camp, especially after the addition of Palin to the ticket. Instead, for the first time in my life, I’m actively campaigning for the other side.

With rising costs for fuel, health care, food, and other necessities, more than half of all Americans struggle to achieve or to maintain a decent life. The American Dream, where anyone willing to work hard will prosper, is on hold. We need to rein in a system grown fat at the top with its bias for big business and big money at the expense of decent, hard-working people.

Compare tax plans of the two candidates. In McCain’s speeches and advertisements, he touts his plans to extend the Bush tax cuts. Saying that he is in favor of extending tax cuts sound good, but he never defines how the cuts are divided up across incomes. In his plan, the fortunate American families reporting more than $2.87 million in income per year see an average tax cut of 4.4%, which means tax cuts for each in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Contrast this to his tax relief for the 60% of American households at the other end of the income spectrum: those making up to $66 thousand per year. McCain’s plan provides these folks less than one percent in tax breaks, from $19 to $319 each. He offers millions to the richest and pennies to those hard-working people at the lowest pay levels.

Obama’s plan redistributes the tax burden, requiring more from the wealthiest households, while providing tax relief from those who earn the least. The highest income group, those making more than $2.87M, will not see tax cuts, but rather will see an average 11.5% tax increase. All households making less than $250K per year (98.1% of all households) will see a tax cut in Obama’s plan, including the 60% making the least, who will see tax cuts of 2.5% to 5.5%. Even with these broad cuts, Obama’s plan would add less to the national debt than McCain’s. (The Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, both nonpartisan and nonprofit organizations compared the two tax plans. See a summary at Tax Proposals).

McCain claims that Obama will tax middle class America, but this only rings true if he believes that most families are making more than $250K per year. This attitude puts him totally out of touch with typical middle class workers. I don’t normally begrudge the richest their multi-million dollar homes, yachts, and off-shore tax havens (some of them actually earned what they have), but the Bush/McCain tax cuts unfairly burden the majority of hard-working people whose salaries can’t keep pace with rising costs for food, medical, fuel, and other basics.

McCain’s other tax plans are also based on the belief that if you make the rich richer, they will invest and expand the economy, which will in turn be good for the rest of Americans. He would drastically slash all corporate tax rates (even as gas and oil companies rake in record profits and even for corporations with monstrous multi-million dollar executive pay), hold the line on tax rates on investment dividends and capital gains, increase the tax exemption on inherited properties from $3.5M to $5.0M, and greatly reduce taxes on inherited wealth above this exemption from 45% to 15%.

Again, in contrast, Obama would only slightly reduce corporate tax rates, raise the highest rate on investment dividends and capital gains, keep the inheritance exemption level at $3.5M, and apply the 45% rate to wealth inherited over the exemption.

I maintain enough of my Republican roots to believe in a certain level of healthy free market economics, but am not so naïve to believe that the rich will always act in my best interests. I choose not to depend on wealth trickling down to my level! I favor Obama’s plan, which recognizes the need for a measure of governmental controls in order to ensure that we maintain a viable, working middle class.

With the recent meltdown on Wall Street, both candidates may have to revise their tax plans, but the current stated plans reflect a critical distinction between the parties. Obama demonstrates a solid understanding of who Middle Americans really are and what challenges we face. His specific fiscal plans target the needs of the majority of workers. We can’t afford another four years of unbalanced tax policies.