Not to be outdone by Herman Cain’s awful 9-9-9 plan, Rick Perry shuffles the deck and draws an even more regressive mess of a tax scheme to transfer wealth to the top. K-Drum takes a look at Perry’s cards.
The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents….My plan also abolishes the death tax once and for all, providing needed certainty to American family farms and small businesses….To help older Americans, we will eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits….We will eliminate the tax on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains to free up the billions of dollars Americans are sitting on to avoid taxes on the gain.
It’s a “flat tax” that keeps many of the same deductions that the flat tax is supposed to get rid of. Perry can’t even get that part right, it seems. The choice of the old tax code or the new one is of course a terrible idea, assuring massive tax breaks for the rich and nothing for the poor. It’s a propaganda tool.
What can you even say about this? It sounds less like a tax plan than a big ol’ stew pot of right-wing applause lines, all the way up to the inane insistence that eliminating the estate tax has nothing to do with rich people and is only designed to provide “needed certainty to American family farms and small businesses.” Should we laugh or cry? Perry has actually managed to combine two separate conservative memes (the estate tax is all about family farms, uncertainty is hobbling the economy) into one single sentence that makes even less sense than either of them separately. It’s hard not to be impressed.
Although the choice part will assure that if “you dumb broke liberals want to raise taxes dur hurr” why we can take Perry’s Hobson’s choice and pay more! It gets Perry back in the game for a few more weeks heading into the end of the year and of course assures Romney will have his own awful “flat tax plan” soon, which is the real point of the measure.
Either way, the 1% wins by stacking the deck.
ciotog
I could be wrong but I don’t think Social Security benefits are taxed.
j low
I’m confused. Mara Liasson told me Perry’s plan was “carefully crafted” and would “promote growth”. Oh, that K-thug. Such a radical.
Litlebritdifrnt2
@ciotog:
Depends on your income over and above your benefits.
PeakVT
It’s a “flat tax” that keeps many of the same deductions that the flat tax is supposed to get rid of.
Flat taxes are flat, not necessarily simple. That’s a different issue. Regardless, the plan is stupid.
j low
@j low: K-Drum rather.
pragmatism
@j low: from a friend that loves bobo, fareed, charlie rose and the mustache of understanding after i noted that i liked kthug’s piece today: “Krugman is tearing this country limb from limb”. so if you were wondering, that’s why shit is fucked up and stuff. QED.
Zifnab
Why? Can’t Romney just stand above it all and say something statemanish like “I’ll leave taxes to the legislature, like the Constitution instructs me”. Does he really need a tax plan to trump this garbage? All he has to say is “I also oppose the estate tax” and “I will also sign legislation that lowers the income tax”. Then lean back and point out that all these other budget plans would be a train wreck for the oh-so-sacred budget and the deficit we consider so important. :-p
Chris
@pragmatism:
LAWL. A New York Times columnist who stands virtually alone in his opinions is somehow single-handedly responsible for the destruction of this country. Right…
JPL
There’s a new book out Keynes Hayek
THE CLASH THAT DEFINED MODERN ECONOMICS. We have tried Hayak’s theories since Reagan and TPM has a few charts showing how it has worked. link
The republicans want to continue with Hayak economics and all I can write is UGH.
Zifnab
@ciotog: Up to half of your social security income can be taxed if you make more than… I want to say $80k. Either way, it just gives more money to people who need it least.
Triassic Sands
Republican tax plans have two things in common: 1) reduce taxes on the rich; and 2) cut revenue significantly.
In the end we’ll have rich people, poor people, the Defense Department and declining life expectancy, which will be good because we won’t have social security, Medicaid, or Medicare.
The question is Will the American people vote for that?
Villago Delenda Est
One of Thomas Jefferson (you remember him, right? Author of the Declaration of Independence? Third President of the United States? Guy who bought Louisiana from Napoleon?) once said that one of his greatest accomplishments was the establishment of the estate tax in order to prevent the perpetration of wealth across generations that made so many miserable in Europe; he wanted to prevent the creation of an aristocracy of wealth in the United States.
He would not approve of Rick Perry. Or the parasite overclass top .01%, for that matter.
Villago Delenda Est
@j low:
Ms. Liasson is villager garbage who has a reservation for a tumbrel.
Fuck her sideways with a rusty chainsaw.
feebog
I’m with Zifnab on this one. Romney need only push out a couple right wing platitudes regarding the estate tax and capital gains while staying away from any thing specific. That way he comes across as the least insane of the bunch to Indepenents and Moderates. Look, we all know that any form of the flat tax is DOA if either house of congress or the Presidency is held by a Democrat. Lets face it, they had six years of Republican held houses and the Presidency, and all we got were tax cuts and huge deficits. At this point, Romney would do well to bite out his tounge. He would be a shoo in for the nomination.
WereBear (itouch)
Not for the first time I have noticed that modern Republicans mistake the appearance of a thing for the actual thing.
A real Presidential candidate has a tax plan. So… Here you go if you don’t like it , you’re just a DFH.
JPL
The latest CBS/NYTimes poll indicates, Romney should keep his mouth shut on taxes. The Republican message on regulations seems to be working but that’s it. Congress is at 9% approval. link
Maybe a front pager will high light the recent poll. Somehow I doubt 50% would be for doing away with regulations that affect businesses if they knew it meant, no more Amer. with disabilities ACT, etc.
Southern Beale
Has anyone noticed what’s going on here? We have the Occupy Wall Street narrative that we need to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest resonating across the country — across the GLOBE. And now Cain & Perry have shifted the narrative to how and whose taxes we’re going to lower?
Why the fuck are we lowering anyone’s taxes? Taxes are a problem for people? They’ve never been this low. That’s why we have huge budget deficits and communities are laying off teachers and first responders. It’s like we’ve rewound the tape 3 months.
jl
The GOPper pres primary tax proposals are getting more patently and obviously ridiculous every day.
Does anyone believe this nonsense? Perry will simplify the tax code by having two of them, one of which is the current version, and you can take your pick?
To be cynical about it, maybe the GOP primary candidates view the GOP primary vote as chickens watching TV. Just make brighter and bigger flashes of nonsense lights, until the chickens squawk out loud, announcing the winner.
Note that I was going to say dogs watching TV, but that would insult dogs, who would understand more.
And, yes, I do not want to, and will not, explain how, but I do have some experience watching chickens watching TV. Pro tip: won’t work unless you turn the lights out.
harlana
OT, but the President is smacking McConnell’s flabby jowls around
Turgidson
@JPL:
semi-related to this topic is the new comedy routine Paul Ryan is trying out – flagged by Benen. Paul Ryan has looked into the future under Obama’s Reign of Terror and determined that it will be one of “painful austerity.”
Paul f’ing Ryan said that. And of course also made yet another fact-free assertion that higher taxes will be a feature of the Obama regime. Even though, you know, he’s been cutting taxes like it’s going out of style and only has designs on raising taxes on a few rich people who won’t notice the money’s even gone.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/paul_ryan_discovers_irony_blas033070.php
harlana
@Southern Beale: it’s ludicrous, everytime i turn on the teevee, all i hear about is stupid, radical tax plans. what about jobs? trickle down does not work would someone please just ask one of these assholes running for the highest office in the land, “do you believe in trickle down economics? is that what drives your tax “plans?” ” because that’s what we’re talking here and i think it’s quite clear to anyone with minimal brain activity that trickle down did not, does not work. and, as you said, somehow we’re back to this
and no matter how stupid the plan is, it’s shifted the debate, to stupid tax plans
amk
@Triassic Sands:
They did by the boatloads in 2010. (and in 2008, and in 2004, and so on)
Warren Terra
I’m not sure this is more regressive than the 999 tax; both were enormous giveaways to the wealthy (low tax of ~20% on earned income, no tax on capital gains or estates), but the 999 tax doubled rates on the working poor and was a 10% increase on the median household. Perry’s so-called plan appears to be a big tax cut on large working families and a cut or neutral on other average folks (compare the EITC and 15% payroll tax from the first dollar under the current system to a $12.5k exemption per person and then 20% flat tax under Perry).
On the other hand, Perry’s plan cuts taxes on the wealthy in half for big earners, slashes them to zero for the silver-spoon set who already have wealth or stand to inherit it. That it doesn’t jack up taxes on everyone else like 999 foes is nice of Perry, I suppose, but it does rather raise the question of how he intends to pay for his massive tax cut to rich folks.
JPL
@Warren Terra: Silly, you know tax cuts pay for themselves or at least they will when you gut the energy dept., the education dept. and social security and medicare.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl:
You can’t just say something like that and just drop it. You just can’t.
arguingwithsignposts
Just wait until Romney announces his 9(1) . . . 9(n) plan!
(FYWP! pretend those brackets represent subscripts)
Larkspur
@amk: Yeah, it’s a craven exploitation of our (Americans’) baseless conviction that some day, some day soon, we are going to become the billionaires we were meant to be, and then all of that tax crap will totally not be in our best interests, so we should nip it in the bud.
I have a friend who’s married, with three sons. They work hard but don’t have much money, and have needed to seek public assistance from time to time. Once, years ago, she and her mom (who they live with) were watching television, and Jesse Jackson was on the news. My friend’s mom got huffy and impatient, saying “That Jesse Jackson just wants to give all the money away to the poor!” And my friend choked a little bit, and answered, “Mom! We are the poor.”
Didn’t matter. What’s Tweety’s tagline? American exceptionalism.
Baud
By definition, all Republican tax plans are fair because those who lose out under them have only themselves to blame.
Martin
Look, all of this liberal taxing of millionaires is just bullshit. If we care about a energizing the American economy, we really need to stop taxing these job creators and provide some kind government funding to ensure their welfare. Any Republican that truly believes in capitalism needs to quit fucking around, cut to the chase and propose this.
Marty
Why do people try to read so much into these republican economic plans? These are all generated by a computer program. It just slaps together some combination of “flat tax”, “privatizing social security”, “tax cuts”, etc. Doesn’t do any math though.
Cat Lady
@harlana:
Eeeewwwwww.
El Cid
South Carolina’s government may rebel against those terrible Medicaid unfunded mandates by demanding the state government expand Medicaid to another 70,000 children and make use of federal funds to do so.
They’ll show those librul big gubmit types a thing or two about Southern states’ rights!
I hope they succeed. Maybe the Tea Party types will rebel, though, and get lists of names of kids who might get a chance at health care and then go scream at their parents that they’re Communists.
I wish the guy, though, didn’t sound like it would be such a terrible thing that the kids’ parents have health insurance too, because it’s not like the kids would be in such a great position if a parent got a catastrophically expensive disease or injury.
Martin
@jl:
So, you do audience research for Fox News? I wouldn’t want to admit to that either.
El Cid
@Turgidson: I was wondering about this, and I think they’re distinguishing between painful austerity and pleasurable austerity.
Painful austerity is when stuff they want is cut — programs giving money and contracts to their friends and funders and peers.
Pleasurable austerity is when the poors get a swift kick in the ass and the libruls are driven crazy.
They’re worried that Obama risks the former, and isn’t sufficiently committed to the latter.
JGabriel
TPM:
The one good thing about Cain is that he shows a black man can beat Romney, even within the GOP. If Romney can’t win against a black man when all the voters are Republican, how’s he going to fare against Obama?
.
Baud
The veneer of seriousness from WaPo:
Redshift
@Baud:
Yeesh. This “striking contrast” can be best described by paraphrasing Stephen Colbert: “Great flat tax plan or greatest flat tax plan?”
jl
I guess the GOP candidate with the flat tax plan that makes the most sense in the real world, not that I would ever vote for any flat tax plan, but the one that actually would make any sense at all… would lose.
looks like that is where this circus is going.
If Perry gets a poll bump because of his ‘simplfied’ tax nonsense, then we will know that is exactly where this circus is going.
arguingwithsignposts
LOLWUT??
JGabriel
@pragmatism:
Send your friend these links:
David Frum — Were Our Enemies Right? Frum admitting that Krugman has been right way more often than Frum’s preferred advocates.
And this follow-up by Henry Blodgett at Business Insider.
.
El Cid
HPV vaccines were all along a liberal plot to turn our boys gay and to preserve the sanctity of buttseks.
I can’t wait for the Republican AM radio explosion on this one.
El Cid
@JGabriel:
He’s the very image of the ruthless fearsome savage warrior. I heard he once beheaded a hundred men for snoring too loud — his own snoring.
arguingwithsignposts
@El Cid: and he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
I imagine a new “Chuck Norris” meme.
MikeJ
@El Cid: I’ve never understood the “vaccination makes you a slut argument”, but I’m sane. Don’t the wingnuts understand that even if their daughter saves her precious flower for her wedding night the boy she’s marrying will have been out doing what everybody acknowledges boys do.
I just don’t understand the idea of wanting your daughter to die because her boyfriend managed to talk a few other girls out of their panties before his wedding night.
El Cid
@MikeJ:
They’re pretty consistent in believing it’s exclusively the girl’s fault when she gets pregnant from having sex.
In any case, the girl can still be blamed for choosing a bad boy.
However, I think that the notion that ‘they want to vaccinate your kid so he’ll have anal sex’ is going to have a bit different path.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab:
Yes, he does. Everyone knows that candidates policy papers have little chance of being implemented as proposed, but they still have to put them out to establish their credibility. Their positions do two things:
1) Prove they have enough policy chops to avoid being snowed by the Washington policy and lobbying establishment
2) Show their ideological position/purity
I think the Democrats tend to use them more for point 1 and the Republicans mostly for point 2, but that doesn’t excuse Romney. If anything, Romney is the most ideologically suspect, so he needs to adopt the most ridiculous policy positions to prove his acceptability. It’s possible he’s put off his tax policy paper until after Cain and Perry just so he can guarantee his position trumps them.
JCT
@Baud:
So that’s what those idiot candidates are all babbling about, “governing philosophies” ? Right, sure.
Fucking ridiculous.
JC
I…I…I….
Words fail me.
That Washington Post article? It’s…it’s…it’s…WOW.
Can anyone tell me why these jokers aren’t being condemned in every paper from sea to shining sea, as being totally unrealistic, completely unworkable plans that will blow out the deficit to a level never seen before?
Every paper.
Every day.
Every columnist.
Mainstream Media fail. Mainstream Media FAIL.
There is NO reason why any of these people peddling INSANITY, should not be called out every day, every day, every day, on just how every plan given, would increase the tax burden for the middle class, destroy Social Security, or bankrupt the government.
Or all three. At the same time.
It is inexcusable.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Should we lower taxes on the rich and fuck the poor, or should we fuck the poor and lower taxes on the rich? It’s a difficult choice, I know.
PhoenixRising
@jl: OMG! Are you Farmer Brown?
Giggle giggle quack…
Citizen_X
@pragmatism:
Oh, so he’s responsible. Now it all makes sense.
At least that gives me another excuse to link to this. (Which I never grow tired of.)
Brain Hertz
Not even close.
Not only does he plan to make capital gains tax free, but did you see the provision about qualified dividends becoming tax free? That’s a loophole that anybody with a good accountant (and who has a big enough income that they can afford to take everything as a single, annual payment) could drive a bus through. I’m quite sure that the Wall Street base has noticed that one.
r€nato
this whole tax plan business is fucking absurd. As several of you have noted:
1) a flat tax is not the same as a simplified tax.
2) a flat tax is mathematically guaranteed to fuck the poor and middle class and give another big, wet, sloppy
french kisstax cut to the wealthy… unless you set it so low that everyone gets some sort of tax cut, in which case the government is guaranteed to not have enough money to fund it.3) Perry’s flat tax proposal actually complicates figuring your income tax… because any rational person would figure their taxes both ways, then pay the lower amount.
‘flat tax’ is simply a euphemism for “I’ll lower your taxes” without all that horribly inconvenient business of talking about what government spending will be cut to pay for those lower taxes.
It’s all kabuki theater, anyway. Perry is desperate, he can promise anything at this point. There’s about 1% chance he’ll have to follow through on his tax plan; he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
MarkJ
I would just like to give you props for a fantastic blog post headline. Pure genius.