On her campaign website, Republican senate candidate Linda McMahon (CT) rails against “reckless” and “out of control” government spending. She calls for the institution of a Balanced Budget Amendment (despite the widespread economic damage such an amendment could cause), and specifically singles out earmarks, claiming that they displace private sector job creation. McMahon has also called for “an end to corporate welfare.”

However, at the CT Post reported, McMahon was all too happy to accept government subsidies for her company, World Wrestling Entertainment, even when the company was laying off workers:

The Stamford-based WWE empire received about $37 million in state tax credits for staging and recording its wrestling spectacles dating back to July of 2009, state officials reported Friday.

The state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD), in response to a request by Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, indicated that the WWE has received 20 separate tax credits totaling $36.7 million.

Three of the 20 credits, awarded as part of state legislation aimed at fostering film, TV and digital production in the state, totaled more than $5 million each in 2010, 2011 and 2012, according to a summary released under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

Jim Watson, spokesman for the DECD, said Friday that the credits were granted, without strings, based on how much money the WWE had spent in Connecticut on producing its events.

“There are no job creation or retention requirements for them to earn the credits,” Watson said. “The credits are awarded based on qualified expenditures made in the state.”

In 2009, WWE collected $9 million in subsidies after announcing plans to lay off 60 workers.

Most states in the U.S. provide tax credits for movie and television production, despite the dubious effect they have promoting job creation. In 2007, Connecticut’s own Department of Community and Economic Development found that its film production credits were not worth the cost. (HT: Kenneth Thomas)

Republican Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling executive who is taking her second shot at winning a Connecticut Senate seat, won’t specify how she would reform Social Security because the media will “bash” the plans, she said after a debate with her opponent, Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy.

At a tea party gathering in April, McMahon said programs like Social Security should have “sunset provisions” that require Congressional action to continue them once they expire, a plan that would constantly put the long-term future of Social Security at risk. She blamed the media for distorting those comments, and now she won’t reveal specifics about how she would change America’s most popular entitlement program until after the election, in order to avoid criticism, CT News Junkie reports:

“I’ve not talked about specifics when I’ve been on the campaign trail because they get demagogued and you have no opportunity at all when you go in and put the issues on the table to discuss them,” McMahon said, adding that it’s necessary to reform the program and there are many ways to do it. [...]

After the debate, McMahon clarified to reporters that it is mostly they, and not her opponent, whom she considers responsible for “demagoguing” ideas for Social Security.

“Thanks to all of you folks in the media, you’re the ones who primarily do it and bash any of the suggestions that might be made to improve the Social Security, Medicare,” she said.

During the 2010 election, McMahon’s first attempt to win election to the Senate, she also declined to offer policy specifics for programs like Social Security until after the election. “Social Security is going to go bankrupt,” she said then. “Clearly, we have to strengthen that…I just don’t believe that the campaign trail is the right place to talk about that.“

The media might not be McMahon’s biggest critic, though. As ThinkProgress has noted, media outlets and debate moderators have been eager to jump on the same myth McMahon and other Republicans who want to reform Social Security use — that the program is quickly headed toward bankruptcy. In fact, the program is financially healthy and guaranteed for the next 25 years — far longer than other basic programs that don’t receive the same scrutiny — and small changes to the payroll tax could ensure its health for another 75 years without changing its benefit structure.

Rather, McMahon’s largest critics would likely be the people she’s trying to represent, since Americans overwhelmingly oppose cutting Social Security benefits.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney isn’t the only GOP candidate characterizing a plan to slash taxes for the rich and corporations as a tax cut for the middle class. Linda McMahon, the former pro wrestling executive who is running (again) for Connecticut’s open Senate seat, has proposed a plan that would provide a windfall in tax breaks to the rich and corporations, even as she pitches it as a big tax cut for the middle class.

At a debate with her opponent, state Rep. Chris Murphy (D), last night, McMahon claimed that Murphy had misrepresented her plan by describing it as a tax cut for the rich:

MCMAHON: My plan, which you’ve not characterized correctly, calls for keeping all of the tax levels the same except cutting taxes for the middle class.

Watch a news report about the debate, via Connecticut’s WTNH:

There are numerous problems with how McMahon pitches her tax cut for the middle class. McMahon’s plan would cut only one tax rate, from 25 percent to 15 percent, that primarily affects middle class taxpayers. McMahon claims that will save middle-class taxpayers as much as $500 a month. This is misleading at best: as the Hartford Courant explained, the $500 amount comes from a household income of $125,000, well above the typical family’s income. And savings even for that family only reach $500 if McMahon assumes the full expiration of the Bush tax cuts, including those for the middle class. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that those tax cuts should be maintained, so using that baseline makes little sense.

The typical Connecticut family, the Courant found, would actually save roughly $82 a month, a far cry from the $500 a month McMahon promises.

McMahon’s plan, however, would provide a huge tax cut for the rich and corporations. Like Romney’s plan, it eliminates the estate tax, a $10.6-billion cut that would benefit only the wealthiest Americans, according to the Tax Policy Center. It also lowers the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent (just like Romney’s plan), a proposal that would cost $900 billion over the next decade. And, again like Romney’s plan, it would shift the corporate tax code to a territorial tax system, a plan that would cost another $130 billion, encourage the outsourcing of jobs and the offshoring of profits, and, according to one study, lead to the elimination of 800,000 American jobs.

Linda McMahon, the former CEO of the World Wrestling Federation and current Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, told a Tea Party gathering earlier this year that she would be open to a change in Social Security that would introduce a “sunset provision,” effectively attaching an expiration date to the social program.

The remarks came during a town hall event in April with local Tea Party groups, but went largely ignored until The Huffington Post flagged the comment yesterday.

At the April Tea Party gathering, McMahon said in response to a question about how to “strengthen” Social Security and Medicare that “we cannot continue doing things the way we are doing with Social Security. We’re just simply going to be bankrupt.”

The candidate later continued, “In other words, I believe in sunset provisions when we pass this kind of legislation, so that you take a look at it 10, 15 years down the road to make sure that it’s still going to fund itself. Social Security will run out of money if we continue to do what we’re doing, if we rob the trust fund, if we think that there’s any money there.”

Sunset provisions, like the one attached to the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year, require congressional action by a determined date or else the legislation it is attached to expires. Attaching one to Social Security would place the long-term future of the program in jeopardy.

McMahon has already run into some difficulty convincing voters that she isn’t out of touch with the needs of middle class families. Thanks to the low tax rates on investments made by her and her husband, McMahon paid a tax rate of just 15 percent her $30.6 million income in 2010, the most recent year for which she has released her returns. Like fellow millionaire Mitt Romney, McMahon is campaigning on a promise to oppose any increase on her own taxes.

Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon earned some headlines today for being the first Republican to distance herself from Mitt Romney’s comments about the “47 percent.” But there’s one area in which McMahon and Romney line up precisely: antipathy towards the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Romney has promised to repeal the law in its entirety, while McMahon said in 2010 (during her failed Senate rin) that she would have voted against it. And on the campaign trail this year, McMahon is calling for a “freeze” on the implementation of the law, as the Connecticut Post reported:

“I would definitely freeze it at the least right now,” McMahon said in a brief interview last week during a campaign stop in her hometown of Greenwich.

That position, not mentioned in her campaign fliers, is in stark contrast to that of Murphy, who boasted about his support of Dodd-Frank when it passed the House of Representatives in June 2010 and has never stopped. [...]

“Look, I think there were some things about Dodd-Frank — I think big banks needed to have more skin in the game,” McMahon said in Greenwich. “But my understanding is that there are still over 280 some rules yet to (be) written.”

Republicans (as well as some Democrats) have been looking at ways to slow down Dodd-Frank and other financial reforms, and the law remains far from being fully implemented. But with the economy still struggling to recover from a financial crisis that cost $12.8 trillion, simply doing nothing, thus letting the banks return to business as usual, should not be considered an option.