I’ve been reading up a bit on the Bowles-Simpson stuff and, while I think most of it is a political nonstarter, I actually agree with David Broder that the tax reforms it suggests could be very helpful. Obviously, the devil is in the details, but corporations do a remarkable job of evading taxation and I believe there is some way to make them less able to evade taxation.
On the other hand, I simply cannot see how anyone can take Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” seriously. Let’s stay away from the details so Megan McArdle can’t lecture us about the difference between the CBO and the Tax Policy Institute. The plan cuts taxes on the wealthy, along with expenditures. You know how that goes, Step 1 is cut taxes on the wealthy, Step 2 is don’t cut expenditures. We’ve seen this movie before.
Why on earth is anyone taking this stuff seriously? Even if cutting both taxes and expenditures is a good idea (and it’s not, it’s typical Republican palaver), it’s not feasible politically to do both. Pairing one popular, deficit-raising policy — tax cuts for the wealthy — with another unpopular, deficit-lowering policy — spending cuts — just isn’t a realistic way to lower the deficit. The Ryan “Roadmap” is not ever going to be implemented.
Steve Benen paints Paul Ryan as the new John McCain, a politician whose base is the media. That isn’t quite fair to McCain, who did co-sponsor important legislation back in the day. What has Ryan ever done?