DOWNLOADS: (102)

PLAYS: (463)

Embed

Jon Perr and Prof. Jeffrey Sachs already explained today why Rick Perry's flat tax is just a terrible idea. This Tuesday, The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner expressed some similar sentiments on the PBS Newshour, where they had him arguing with The Wall Street Journal's resident hack and flat tax fan, Stephen Moore.

As Kuttner explained, Perry's plan is nothing more than a tax cut for the affluent who are the ones now paying above the 20 percent rate and who of course are going to opt to pay the lower amount, that would nothing to create jobs or simplify the current tax code. Kuttner also went after Moore for doing nothing more than repeating "slogans" rather than actually addressing any of the points he made about the problems with Perry's plan.

As Kuttner also pointed out, Perry's plan would actually make our deficit problems worse, which would of course mean conservatives calling for cuts to Social Security and other government programs that help the working class.

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (141)

PLAYS: (838)

Embed

At a campaign event in Detroit Friday, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain revealed exceptions to his 9-9-9 tax proposal that make the plan less like the flat tax that his supporters have made it out to be.

Cain scheduled Friday's speech after other Republican candidates attacked his plan at Tuesday's CNN debate.

"This is a day that we have an opportunity to explain 9-9-9 without six attacks at one time," Cain declared.

"So, here are two of the features my competitors didn't get to when they didn't read the plan... If you are at or below the poverty level, your plan isn't 9-9-9, it's 9-0-9. Say, amen, y'all. 9-0-9. In other words, if you are at or below the poverty level based on family size and because it's a different number for each one then you don't pay that middle nine tax on your income."

He continued: "The 'opportunity zones' will allow cities like Detroit to qualify for additional exemptions relative to the first nine. Right now on the first nine, you can deduct purchases if you are a business, you can deduct capital expenditures, net exports, but for those cities that will qualify as 'opportunity zones,' you will also be able to deduct a certain amount of your payroll expenses so you will be incentited [sic] to put people to work."

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore has praised Cain's plan as coming "closest to a true flat tax."

"His argument for a '9-9-9' plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax," Moore wrote in September. "That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry."

Stephen Colbert took a shot at Herman Cain for blaming the unemployed for not having jobs and carrying water for Wall Street during this week's GOP presidential debate:

COLBERT: Yeah unemployed! You should be out in front of the White House blaming themselves for not having a job. Wall Street, may I remind you, Wall Street has not cratered our economy for like two years. That's ancient history!

DOWNLOADS: (291)

PLAYS: (5780)

Embed

On Tuesday's morning call-in show on C-SPAN, Washington Journal, a caller from Texas demonstrates what happens to your brain after watching too much Fox News and paying attention to Red State's Erick Erickson and his ridiculous "We are the 53%" campaign he launched in response to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

SAMUAL FROM TEXAS: I think a lot of people are getting onto the whole 9-9-9 plan because it's something easy to remember and you know, we're just overburdened with the tax system we have. People lately are really talking the ninety nine percent verses the one percent. I think something more here is another number – it's forty six, fifty four. I may be a little off there but I believe those are the numbers.

Forty six percent of Americans or right around there pay no personal income tax. And the other fifty four percent pay all of it and I think that's the real number and you know, we're basically having to carry the rest of the country on our back. And I'm not saying, you know, all these ninety nine percenters out there are poor people or anything. I think a lot of them are just people who've been handed everything in their life. But I like the ninety nine plan. If nothing else, everybody starts to pay their fair share, instead of one part of the country carrying the rest who's not doing anything.

Listen to the caller try to respond after host Greta Brawner points out that under Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan, billionaire investor Warren Buffett would likely pay no income tax at all as the Huffington Post reported here -- Warren Buffett Would Most Likely Pay No Income Tax Under Herman Cain's '999' Tax Plan: Analysis.

You can almost smell the hairs burning off their head through the television screen. Sadly, Brawner did not point out the the caller that even though many do not pay any federal income taxes, they pay plenty of other taxes and many of them are also Social Security recipients.

Solidarity Pizza Fund:

DOWNLOADS: (48)

PLAYS: (392)

Embed

While going after Herman Cain for his 9-9-9 tax plan and the fact that it would raise taxes on the middle class and the poor, Mitt Romney touted his own economic plan during the CNN debate in Las Vegas. Romney claimed he wanted to lower taxes on the middle class, but as Think Progress noted in their live blog of the debate, "It’s really a $6.6 trillion regressive giveaway to the rich and corporations."

Romney’s ‘Middle Class Tax Cut’ Would Provide No Benefits To Most Of The Middle Class:

During this week’s GOP primary debate, Newt Gingrich asked Mitt Romney why he has proposed eliminating capital gains taxes for only those making less than $200,000 annually (which is a key component of Romney’s economic plan). “If I’m going to use precious dollars to reduce taxes, I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that’s the middle class,” Romney said. “The people in the middle, the hard-working Americans, are the people who need a break, and that is why I focused my tax cut right there.”

Romney may think he focused his tax cut on the middle-class, but according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Tax Policy Center data*, nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income

To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it. The table below shows how few households in each income bracket would be affected by Romney’s cut:

More details there, so go read the rest.

DOWNLOADS: (181)

PLAYS: (675)

Embed

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Sunday that he was "delighted" that fellow candidate Herman Cain was surging in the polls but hoped his popularity would be short lived.

"Herman Cain is a terrific person," Gingrich told CNN's Candy Crowley. "I think there's a certain attractiveness to Herman that a lot of people find very genuine. He's a good friend of mine and I'm delighted for him that he's having this kind of run. I wouldn't want it to go to the nomination but I'm delighted that he's having this kind of run."

"If Herman figures out how to do it all right and if he can explain a nine percent sales tax so people decide they want it, he has a good chance to be the nominee. If, however, in New Hampshire, for example, where they have no sales tax at all and no mechanism for collecting it, or in Iowa where senior citizens are going to say, wait a second, as my 79-year-old mother-in-law said on her Social Security, in her fixed income she's now going to pay nine percent more? As people look at 999 and disaggregate it, it gets to be a lot harder sale, I think."

The candidate added that Cain had surged because Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who many saw as the alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, had stumbled during several debates.

"Is Perry done?" Crowley asked.

"No, nobody's done in this business," the former House Speaker declared.

DOWNLOADS: (148)

PLAYS: (1279)

Embed

From Politico -- Herman Cain's economic adviser is not an economist:

Herman Cain says his much-touted 9-9-9 plan is the product of extensive testing and thinking, but the only man he cited as involved with its research — Rich Lowrie of Cleveland, Ohio — is not a trained economist.

Instead, Lowrie — who’s the only economic adviser Cain has been willing to mention by name — is a wealth manager for a division of Wells Fargo and according to his LinkedIn page holds an accountancy degree from Case Western Reserve University. Lowrie also spent three years on the advisory board of the conservative third-party group Americans For Prosperity.

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO was pressed for his circle of economic advisers at Tuesday’s debate in response to a question from moderator Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post.

“My advisers come from the American people. Now, I will have some experts. One of my experts that helped me to develop this is a gentleman by the name of Rich Lowrie out of Cleveland, Ohio,” Cain said during the debate. “He is an economist, and he has worked in the business of wealth creation most of his career.”

The Daily Show's Blog has more on Lowrie -- Meet Rich Lowrie, Herman Cain's Mystery Economic Adviser:

Who is this "Rich Lowery?" Is he an Economics Nobel Laureate? A former high-ranking Federal Reserve official, like Herman Cain himself? Actually, the crack news team at the Spencer Daily Reporter of Spencer, Iowa reveals him to be Rich Lowrie, a wealth management adviser with an accounting degree.

Lowrie, who has affiliations with the American Conservative Union and Americans for Prosperity, was a donor to Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign efforts, but has since drunk the pizza-sauce-flavored Kool-Aid — excuse me, the "pure rocket fuel" — of Cain's economic policies. Of course, as an employee of a division of Wells Fargo, a firm that received $25 billion in TARP funds, Lowrie may not be the best spokesman for Cain's free-market oriented policies. There's another lesson Cain learned in the chain pizza biz: don't let the diners get a close look at the sous-chefs.

DOWNLOADS: (82)

PLAYS: (388)

Embed

Rep. Michele Bachmann took a shot at Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan during the Oct. 11th GOP debate hosted by The Washington Post and Bloomberg.

BACHMANN: I would have to say the 9-9-9 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. and I would say from my experience being in Congress, but also as a federal tax lawyer, whey you, the last thing you would do is give Congress another pipeline of a revenue stream. And this gives Congress a pipeline in a sales tax, a sales tax that could also lead to a value added tax. The United States Congress put into place the Spanish American war tax in 1898. We only partially repealed that in 2006. so once you get a new revenue stream, you're never going to get rid of it.

And one thing I would say is when you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details.

DOWNLOADS: (86)

PLAYS: (326)

Embed

For the second week in a row on the Sunday shows, Herman Cain was out there pushing his regressive 9-9-9 tax plan, this week going so far as to say he would not even allow the poor to be exempt from paying taxes on food.

From Think Progress -- Herman Cain: Tax Poor People’s Food To Finance Massive Tax Break For The Rich:

The centerpiece of former pizza czar Herman Cain’s presidential campaign is his “999″ plan, which would slash taxes on the wealthy, drive up deficits to the worst point since World War II, and force low-income Americans to pay a massive nine times their current tax rate. In an interview this morning with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Cain even said food and clothing would not be exempt from the 9 percent national sales tax he would put in place if elected president. Indeed, he said it would be “fair” for a poor person to pay as much in sales taxes as Crowley does [...]

Because he says his plan would lower the income tax for some Americans — and, by his calculations, leave people with more money to spend — Cain seems to think his plan would leave low-income Americans with more money. He is wrong. Presently, the bottom quintile of earners pays about 2 percent of their income in federal taxes. Under Cain’s plan, their taxes would increase all the way up to 18 percent. [...]

This week, Cain said his plan would not be regressive because “It expands the base so that everybody has a lower rate. And it is not regressive on the poor.” Clearly, he is ignoring how his tax plan would actually affect hardworking Americans, especially when it comes to the food they buy so that they can feed their families.

Full transcript via CNN below the fold.

Continue reading »