Reaganism After Reagan

New York Times ^ | February 17, 2013 | RAMESH PONNURU

[reaganaut1]

...

When Reagan cut rates for everyone, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the income tax was the biggest tax most people paid. Now neither of those things is true: For most of the last decade the top rate has been 35 percent, and the payroll tax is larger than the income tax for most people. Yet Republicans have treated the income tax as the same impediment to economic growth and middle-class millstone that it was in Reagan’s day. House Republicans have repeatedly voted to bring the top rate down still further, to 25 percent.

A Republican Party attentive to today’s problems rather than yesterday’s would work to lighten the burden of the payroll tax, not just the income tax. An expanded child tax credit that offset the burden of both taxes would be the kind of broad-based middle-class tax relief that Reagan delivered. Republicans should make room for this idea in their budgets, even if it means giving up on the idea of a 25 percent top tax rate.

When Reagan took office, he could have confidence in John F. Kennedy’s conviction that a rising tide would lift all boats. In more recent years, though, economic growth hasn’t always raised wages for most people. The rising cost of health insurance has eaten up raises. Controlling the cost of health care has to be a bigger part of the Republican agenda now that it’s a bigger portion of the economy. An important first step would be to change the existing tax break for health insurance so that people would be able to pocket the savings if they chose cheaper plans.

[reaganaut1]

I think its important to keep the payroll tax because as many people as possible ought to pay some taxes, and because giving Social Security and Medicare benefits to people who paid neither income or payroll taxes in their working years make them welfare programs.

Ponnuru is a senior editor of National Review, and he wants to make the tax code even more progressive. Mainstream conservatism is not what it used to be.

[MadIsh32]

The payroll tax is a progressive ponzi scheme which simply robs the young to pay for the older.

It is the biggest waste of my tax dollars. Let me just opt out of payroll taxes and better invest my funds.

[MadIsh32]

The payroll tax is a progressive ponzi scheme which simply robs the young to pay for the older.

It is the biggest waste of my tax dollars. Let me just opt out of payroll taxes and better invest my funds.

[Vigilanteman]

In theory, you are absolutely correct. In practice, there are a ton of people who collect social security and medicare who have never paid a dime into either.

Meanwhile, people like my wife who took time off to raise kids are no longer employable because they lack recent experience. Accordingly, she can't qualify for a dime of social security (except what I might eventually get) because she won't have the necessary number of working quarters to qualify.

Meanwhile, high income professionals who live in San Fransicko (and other big cities) and import their elderly parents and qualify them for social security and medicare just because of their age even though they've never paid a dime into the system.

The reality is that social security and medicare are already welfare programs for those who get favorable political treatment.

[PGalt]

What? No mention of spending? DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic. BIG GOVERNMENT IS CRONY SOCIALISM.

http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml

Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat

http://www.usdebtclock.org

Nice try Ramesh. poo poo

[Buckeye McFrog]

The whole paradigm now is revisionist. The world came completely off the tracks the day Reagan took his oath, dontcha know.

[marron]

The biggest impediment currently to economic expansion is the regulatory burden.

Do something about that or there won’t be anything to tax.