One truly hates to agree with Michele Bachmann. But, unfortunately, the devil is in the details. And we suspect it won’t be too long before someone turns Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan on its head and its true father is revealed.
Mr. Cain is proposing that our current tax code be thrown out. Now this is not a bad idea. The current tax code is little more than an agglomeration of tax break, tax credits and the like, benefiting most of the haves and penalizing most of the have-nots. The problem is, Mr. Cain’s proposal does almost exactly the same thing…only more. Mr. Cain’s trip 9’s suggests setting a flat income tax rate of 9%, flat corporate tax of 9% and a flat national sales tax of 9%.
Nine percent? He’s kidding, right?
We in Los Angeles pay a sales tax of 10%. Most Californians pay at or near the same levels. If we were to add Mr. Cain’s national sales tax, we’d be paying nearly 20% sales tax on the same items. Naturally…since Mr. Cain believes people are poor and unemployed through their own fault…this tax would fall most heavily on the lowest income people. Meanwhile, the same people, who currently pay little or no income tax, would suddenly find themselves paying nine percent of their incredibly tiny incomes to the government. And the middle class would find their overall taxes nearly doubled.
Of course, the rich and the corporations would make out like bandits. The top individual rate would drop by more than two-thirds. And the corporate rate…well, those corporations that actually pay taxes would find those tax rates reduced to nearly nil. At the same time, Mr. Cain would eliminate the capital gains tax, the estate tax…in fact, any tax that falls, allegedly, on the affluent would be gone.
And that’s just the part he tells us. There’s a whole other part he’s not telling you…the part that gives “fuzzy math” a whole new meaning.
Independent economic experts have calculated that Mr. Cain’s plan would raise only half the revenues needed to fund the government at its current level of spending. When confronted with these analyses, Mr. Cain simply says their calculations are incorrect. He declines, however, to provide the calculations on which his conclusions are based. There’s an excellent reason for that. Two very large items are missing from Mr. Cain’s calculations.
Social Security and Medicare.
They’re gone. Mr. Cain would return these retirement and health insurance programs to the states or the cities…as if, in their current financial crises, they can afford them. More ideally, he would return these functions to the churches and private charities. In other words, Mr. Cain would return our sick and elderly to the exact conditions they faced in, roughly, 1932…the last time the R’s took the country over the economic precipice.
Perhaps we’re being alarmist. Even the R’s aren’t that crazy. Are they? At present polling, Mr. Cain commands the loyalty of 27% of Republican primary voters. He is the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination. It is not beyond possibility that Herman Cain could be the Republican nominee for President. At the very least, there is the strong possibility he could be the nominee for Vice President.
And, suddenly, Michele Bachmann looks like the sane one.
Comments