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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).