Posted on 04/17/2009 1:03:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Martin Feldstein, a former chairman of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been tapped to head President Barack Obama’s efforts to simplify a federal tax code the president this week called “monstrous,” the Harvard University economist said Friday.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker asked Mr. Feldstein to serve as coordinator of a four-person “tax group” within the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Mr. Feldstein said. The other three include Laura Tyson of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson.
The group has a decidedly bipartisan pedigree. As its coordinator, Mr. Feldstein brings a long-held belief in the power of tax cuts to spur the economy. Ms. Tyson, an early top Clinton White House economist, helped craft the tax increases of the early 1990s. Mr. Donaldson, an investment banker, was appointed SEC chief by then-President George W. Bush, although he backed Mr. Obama in the presidential campaign. Mr. Ferguson, a Clinton appointee to the Fed, is now president and chief executive of TIAA-CREF, the giant teachers’ pension fund.
The panel has been ordered to produce a book of tax simplification options by the end of the year, giving Mr. Obama yet another tall political order on top of a national health plan,
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
Turning over everything I earn is very “simple”. It’s also what Obama has in mind.
Same Thought - All future paychecks to be made payable to the United States Treasury, with small payroll deductions to your checking account commensurate with loyalty oaths made to the democratic party. Big loyalty oath larger deduction. No loyalty oath, no deduction. A new way for conservatives to prove they are patriots.
Listening to Obama’s comments yesterday, he apparently thinks that the way to “simplify” taxes is to have the IRS calculate your taxes for you. That way you wouldn’t have to waste all that time on your own tax preparation, just trust the government to get it right.
Simple two part tax code.
1. How much did you make?
2. Send it in.
BS, BS, BS! There is no plan to simplify the tax code. It is too ingrained in the Dems (and too many Republicans) to use the tax code as both a carrot and a stick for social engineering instead of just using it as a method to collect the funds necessary to run government. Everything from the "progressive" (in the same sense that cancer is a progressive disease) tax rates to tax credits for weatherstripping your house is meant to get the American people to run through the right chute on the way to shearing like good little sheep.
To argue for a truly simplified tax code is to argue for the removal of all social controls from the tax code. Not going to happen under Obama.
Ron Reagan Jr.’s advisor from Air America?
Obama’s simple tax: simply take 100% of everything you own or make. No forms, no fuss. Just give it all over to him.
“There is no plan to simplify the tax code. It is too ingrained in the Dems (and too many Republicans) to use the tax code as both a carrot and a stick for social engineering instead of just using it as a method to collect the funds necessary to run government.”
Correct.
Obama has already engaged in political larceny by stealing the tax-cuts terms and abusing it to describe his IRS check giveaways.
Then he did a ‘fiscal responsibility summit’ the SAME WEEK he signed off on the $800 BILLION BOONDOGGLE SPENDING bill.
This frauduluent Tax Simplification group will make the same blue ribbon proposals a Bush group gave 4 years ago, and it will go down the same black hole, as Congress ramps up another useless tax-subsidy-break, all while jacking up tax rates on work and income and production.
“This frauduluent Tax Simplification group will make the same blue ribbon proposals a Bush group gave 4 years ago, and it will go down the same black hole, as Congress ramps up another useless tax-subsidy-break, all while jacking up tax rates on work and income and production.”
If Obama has no plans to simplify the tax code, he was foolish to add Marty Feldstein, who will be absolutely uninhibited about speaking his mind. Feldstein has done pioneering work on the efficiency losses associated with income taxes, concluding that increases in marginal tax rates among those with the highest incomes can produce economic losses of more than $2.00 for every new dollar of revenue gained. He is absolutely no friend to those wishing to grow the size of government or efforts to load new taxes on the “rich.”
Bills go through Congress.
Congress will do nothing.
This is just an Obama distraction/misdirection play.
It’s not what he says, it’s what he DOES.
Congress added complexity to the tax code and will spend trillions next year.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.