Posted on 10/21/2011 1:13:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I hear you, FRiend.
Every soldier needs to take a rest now and then before getting back to business.
As warty as this all is, I have to say I never thought I’d see a serious push for major tax reform in my lifetime. (Watching conservatives let Steve Forbes die on the political vine formed my outlook.)
But . . .here we are! And it’s awesome!
Yes, there are MULTIPLE things we need to do to make this work, but OTOH, this is the best (and perhaps) last shot we have.
We have no choice but to go for it, against probably the biggest goal line stand we’ll see in our lifetime. Libs know there’s one play left. If they can muddle through this election, grow the taker class to over 50%, it’s GAME OVER.
So I see what we’re doing now as going through a sort of arduous training. We have to understand these plans and ideas, how to go on offense, how to go on defense, what the other side is going to try. The more work we do now, hashing this out among ourselves and more or less in the world of talk radio and conservative punditry, the more ready we’ll be when the LSM finally gets fully engaged and goes on its ferocious attack.
We have to be ready to the linemen’s push — rising up like a massive wall behind our ball carrier and pushing and pushing and pushing him up and over the offensive line and into the end zone — not just in terms of winning the presidency, but then, as you note, to get the players in place and the play designed to actually get this problem fixed.
It’s a long “training camp” between now and the election, so hang in there. And everybody needs a breather now and then.
I just hope Bachmann gets out before she does any more damage.
Honestly, I don’t think you commit a worse sin against conservatism than claiming that a plan such as 999 “hurts the poor the most.”
Good grief, Michele, EVERY GOP reform in the book can be said to “hurt the poor the most.” And that will be said by Libs, to the point that our nation may be torn apart.
How will we ever sell any entitlement reform if one of our biggest, most articulate spokespersons of the Right and the Tea Party yaps on one of the most-watched political events of the election season that the reform “hurts the poor the most”?
I am quite ticked off about this. That was a very myopic remark by Mrs. Bachmann, not to mention that it was not a well-founded criticism of the comprehensive economic effect of 999.
I’ve put my positive idea out there:
Let the states decide how their residents will, as a whole, pay federal taxes. Reduce the IRS to two guys who spend a couple days writing and sending tax bills to the states, and a month later a couple more days cashing 50 checks. One state may opt for income taxes, another sales taxes, another tariffs, another fees. Citizens may them go to whatever state they decide is the fairest ad best option for them.
Treating everyone “guilty until proven innocent” is not a positive solution.
For example:
Then do the same for ALL state taxes...
#15
Although the national poverty level/cutoff is the same in the lower 48, depending upon which state and even which city or town one lives in, at the poverty level some have far more than others.
Discounting illegals, even our rural "poor" live at a far higher level, now, than those in the same places did, throughout America's history!
Are you disputing the fact that our so-called poorest of the poor are doing better than poor peoples in other nations and/or at other periods of time?
Let’s not forget the cheerleaders on the side.
Go fightinJAG Go
Why, thank you!
I think?
:)
Ugh. Just saw Bachmann and Santorum will be on one of the Sunday shows this week.
You just know that’s going to be a dump-on-Cain free-for-all. Now they’ve got a bee in their bonnets about this supposed pro-life issue and Cain.
More pathetic made-up wailing.
You may be reading posts too quickly. I’m asking for examples of what I quoted you saying, specifically. Nothing to do with poverty rates.
Are you questioning the fact that I said that the 9-9-9plan, which stinks on ice, keeps changing?
It has!
It has morphed into a 9-9-9 plan for some, some other kind of plan for those who live in DETROIT ( where Cain asked the audience to say:"AMEN", which I found extremely offensive ! ) when he said that THEY would be spared some of the taxes in one respect and ALL of them on income, and yet a different "plan" for businesses who agree to do business in the ghettos.......eeeeeeerrrrrr...."empowerment zones".
The "poor" will get a prebate on sales taxes, pay NO income taxes, and therefore STILL have no skin in the game.
His plan is a PROGRESSIVE tax on most, freebies for others, some loopholes for some businesses, which means that the final figures won't add up at the 9 level.
Some people are giddily happy with this plan, even with the backtracking, exemptions, and "tweekings". I'm NOT! All this plan would do, is to ADD a Federal level of sales tax!
People tighten their belts in hard times......yes, even the wealthy. Sales taxes on food and services will take away any imagined "savings" the rest of this plan supposedly gives.
The reality of it all is...............this plan, whatever the bloody hell it is/shall be, has NO chance of being put into law.
Nope, don’t love it at all. We need to change it. Sooner, rather than later. I got no problem with a 9-9-9, but when some people are going 9-0-9, I don’t like that. At all.
i dont like 9 0 9 either but its a lot better than 35 0 0 which some pay now....at least they will pay 9% on new purchases and have a little skin in the game.
I agree. I believe that we can do better, but it’s a start. Unfortunately, we never get past yacking about it.
I hear ya.
I don’t see how any GOP tax plan gets through without this kind of modification, however, when even people on the Right, supposedly highly in sync with the Tea Party (I’m talking Michele Bachmann here), jabber on on national TV about how the plan “hurts the poor the most.”
I mean: if I were Cain and his people I would have been just crazy with frustration after that!
There’s not a reform in the world — particularly entitlement reform — that the Left (to some extent, accurately) won’t wail about as “hurting the poor the most.”
That CAN’T be the benchmark for whether we move forward with a certain reform — especially since “hurting the poor the most” is a powerful slogan that often completely obscures the TRUE comprehenisve effect of the reform on the poor. (I.e., not just looking at the amount of their welfare check at the end of the month.)
And we have our own people boxing our bold reformers in by chiming in on the Left’s lies about how pro-growth policies “hurt the poor the most”??
I am beyond frustrated with this garbage!
We FINALLY got a serious push for tax reform and along come some of the supposedly strongest voices on the Right and they — again, I’m speaking specifically of Bachmann here, but others joined in her sentiment — start wailing about how we shouldn’t even consider this plan because “it hurts the poor the most”??
My point is that, of course, at some point, sooner rather than later, reformers are going to feel they can’t fight the Left AND the Right sloganeering on “it hurts the poor the most.”
So reformers will more or less give in to the political realities and try to come up with the least counterproductive way to shut down the Bachmanns of the world’s criticisms.
All that said, 999 has deep roots in all the various permutations of conservative tax reform proposals that have been out there for decades. And many of them have included a standard deduction for income at or below the poverty level. (Which, yes, the government sets the poverty level. Hey, if that was the level of the STANDARD deduction, it might actually help keep government from its longstanding march of poverty-creep.) So, no surprise, really.
I just would like to see this be a standard deducation. This would preserve the principle of equality across the income tax system, which is one of the “freedom” reasons to do this reform.
Let EVERYBODY deduct the amount of income that is at or below the poverty line from their gross income for tax purposes. That means some people would pay 0 (not 0%) in income tax, but that wouldn’t be different from the person whose charitable deductions equalled his gross income — he also would pay 0 (not 0%) in income tax.
But the rate on taxable income would remain 9% and everybody pays it to the extent they had taxable income (in this example: gross income - standard deduction (income in the amount of at or below the poverty line) - charitable deductions).
That could work. One thing that would have to go, and I don’t know if it would, would be the EIC. That’s nothing more than IRS welfare. If the po’ folk ain’t gonna pay taxes on income, we at least need to make sure that we don’t pay them for being poor.
Nice commentary, by the way. I feel honored that you took the time to write it. Thanks.
First it's zero income tax for the "poor". Then it's zero sales tax for "necessities" like food, baby formula, diapers, etc. Then it's zero corp taxes for businesses that set up in "empowerment zones".
Of course, the lowering of revenues due to these exemptions will mean raising the tax rate to 15 or 20%. At which point we're right back where we are now.
Either the plan firmly comes with no exceptions, or forget it.
I think it would be best to have a tax code that taxes on the first dollar, even for the poor. That way, when somebody proposes raising the tax rates, it will be felt by EVERYBODY. We got into our current mess precisely because 50% of the population feels no direct effect from taxes.
RE: I think it would be best to have a tax code that taxes on the first dollar, even for the poor. That way, when somebody proposes raising the tax rates, it will be felt by EVERYBODY. We got into our current mess precisely because 50% of the population feels no direct effect from taxes.
_________________
Well, what to say? a 9-9-9 plan with NO tweaking to 9-0-9 for poverty level wage earners would have done just that — NO EXCEPTIONS.
But then the 9-9-9 plan that is not tweaked gets criticized by both left and right for INCREASING taxes on the poverty level wage earner by over a thousand dollars which will make them even WORSE OFF than they were before.
You can’t win either way.
Either you make one or two simple exceptions or you stay with the current tax code.
Backatcha. Thank you for the good discussion.
I do think the EITC goes away under 999 because all deductions except the charitable deduction get axed.
The only other scenario I see for the EITC is that it gets treated like income and is subject to tax (9%) so long as the person’s income is above the poverty line.
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