The Republicans tax reform plan is on giant smooch to the one tenth of 1%. But they may be able to get the proles behind it because they will claim it also helps out the middle class. As they keep harping, a family of 4 will garner some $1500.00 (choosing of course the best possible scenario), and who doesn’t like free money. Of course if you took the 150 Billion dollars/year that this is going to add to the deficit and divvied it up evenly between every man woman and child, the average family of four would come out at just under $1900.00.
This makes me think that the Dems could gain support by taking the same 1.5 trillion and creating a plan that is actually aimed at the middle and working class rather than paying lip service like the Republican plan. By having a contrasting plan out there, and point out line by line why their plan is better for working class families it will show the Republicans for the thralls of the rich that they truely are. Further, since there is no way in hell, that the Dem’s plan will ever come up to a vote much less be implemented, their plan doesn’t have to worry about the actual economic consequences or political realities. All it has to do is play well in Peoria.
My thought is, if they put out a plan that " doesn’t … worry about the actual economic consequences or political realities", they’d just be setting themselves up for (actually legitimate, in this case) accusations that “Those Libtards just don’t understand math!”
The Republicans already claim that, of course, but this plan would legitimize that argument.
Starting in 2009, the GOP started an 8-year campaign to do this without coming up with a workable plan to replace what they were decrying. Then they got in power, and now things are a mess because they didn’t have an actual workable plan.
I see no good reasons to encourage the other party to enact a similar strategy.
It would never make it out of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means to the floor.
Due to the Originating Clause it is not possible for the Democrats to just propose a tax solution, as it wouldn’t be constitutional to pass even if the house did agree to it.
This is why the Democrats had to modify an unrelated house bill to end the shutdown in 2013. It is also intentional, as this clause is suppose to give power to states with larger populations, in balance to the per state population of the Senate.
I know the GOP has gerrymandered themselves into a lot seats, but you seem to be claiming there are no Democrats in the House of Representatives? The goal here isn’t to pass anything, anyway, it’s to show that there are rational alternatives.
I’m not really seeing the upside to Dems buying in to increasing the debt by $1.5 trillion. It really robs Dems if being able to say that they won’t sign up to irresponsible tax cuts.
All taxes revert to where they were on the first day of Bill Clinton’s administration, except:
If your AGI is less than $125K single, $250K filing joint, reduce it by 35% before continuing.
If your AGI is greater than $500K/$1M, increase it by 20% before continuing.
Index the AMT to inflation retroactively, starting in 1975.
There you go. Debt goes down, we actually fix the problem (we’ve been giving out tax cuts for decades with no revenue increase), and it’s a middle class tax cut.
This problem isn’t hard. It’s only hard if the actual goal is to give a bunch of pathologically wealthy people their 2,719’th handout in tax cuts while CALLING it a "middle class tax cut.
If it originates outside of the House, it cannot become law. Inside the house it would need to be referred the Ways and Means committee which will send it to the appropriate sub committee.
Committee on Ways and Means: 39 members, 24 R - 15 D (24 is a super-majority 61.5%)
Subcommittee on Tax Policy: 14 members, 9 R - 5 D (9 is a super-majority 64%)
They are suppose to have the same ratio as the main house which would be 55%, but part of the number games is to fudge the rounding as much as possible.
To become law or read in the house, it needs to be heard by committees that will never send it to the full house.
They are if the same government that provides the infrastructure, the security, the R&D, and relieves businesses of numerous liabilities must go into debt otherwise.
Any system of taxes that doesn’t levy enough money to both cover all immediate government bills and pay off the national debt in a reasonable timespan is a handout to those who own assets in the United States.
It does. If I provided you a service, and you got rich, you owe me for the part I did. The government is the one that created the conditions for wealth. If your hypothesis was correct, other countries with less adequate governments would have many wealthy billionaires. Oddly enough, they do not.
Absolutely the government deserves it’s cut. Looks like it’s about 1/6 of all assets in the United States. (20 trillion national debt, 120 billion total assets, simple arithmetic). We can either tax asset transfers (income or sales taxes) or we can tax the assets themselves. I personally think a 50% estate tax, and an elimination of all shelters (basically, an accounting of all 120 trillion in assets and who owns them, and a tax when they are ruled deceased) would most efficiently clean up these books.
You are just parroting the thieves who allowed the US federal books to get into the state that they are in.
Assume a 50% estate tax on everyone. Run the numbers - how much will be collected, and from whom? If a small business owner dies, what happens to his business? If someone dies with any money in investments, what happens to those investments, and how are they liquidated? When a man dies, does his widow then have to sell their house and move?
OK, they’re a change from the status quo that would benefit certain persons, relative to the status quo.
Bricker was playing similar semantic games in another thread, so I came up with a word in his honor. Tax cuts aren’t a handout, they’re not a gift, they’re a Brift. A Brift, as suggested above, is a change in the tax code from the status quo in a way that benefits some people relative to the status quo. Those people receive a Brift if the change is enacted.
I don’t think the OP is such a bad idea (in theory), but no need to keep the $1.5T in deficit additions. We’re not talking about proposing legislation at this moment (as noted, the Dems aren’t in much of a position to do so), but there is no constitutional issue here in floating a plan before the public as implied in some of the posts here. Whether it would be a good political move or not, I’m unsure. Right now the GOP seems to be doing pretty well at hanging itself with it’s “Let’s Make the Super-Rich Great Again” tax plan, so maybe the best thing to do is sit back and watch. Oppose the plan, but let them be their own demise.
You’re missing the point. In my OP I recognized that there was no way that any actual proposal by the Democrats would go anywhere legislatively. This tax cut proposal is meant as a rhetorical device. Something to contrast with the Republicans plan, so that even a hard working taxed enough already West Virginian will call up their Congressman and ask, “Why aren’t you giving us something like this?”
I think the broader idea is a good one – we could have a progressive tax reform bill with the potential to be popular (even with no chance of passing under this congress). For example – make taxes very easy… let the IRS do it (since they already collect all the info required anyway), and send out a letter every Jan/Feb with your estimated tax bill or refund, which everyone is free to challenge and recalculate if they wish, or accept and pay/process without challenging if they prefer. Remove the cap on payroll taxes. Bring back Clinton-level higher-income brackets. And various other progressive tax preferences.
At the very least, I don’t think they’d lose anything by presenting such a plan.
The Democrats should counter with an honest tax plan, which raises rates on everybody except the lowest earners, in order to pay for what we’re already busting the budget on (and add necessary services we can afford).