Taxes, The Finger Thing Means The Taxes

Everyone knows that the GOP's anti-tax insanity has only gotten stronger in recent years (to the point where Democrats couldn't even propose a minimum wage increase last year without promising tax cuts to the GOP, who then spent five months blocking the bill anyway). This now seems to be resulting in the GOP presidential candidates trying to out-crazy each other on tax policy.

Mike Huckabee-- you know, that liberal-- supports the 'Fair Tax'. Here he gives conservative economists everywhere a woody: “Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly... But I am running to eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all — personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment." Because you know how unfair things like estate and capital gains taxes are to the average Joe, so you can see why a populist like Huckabee would hate them. And this 'Fair Tax' he proposes as a replacement, what does it do? Well-

Americans would pay only one federal tax, which would be applied to just about everything they buy: not just the goods people buy at stores on which most states assess a sales tax, but nearly all services, including health care and insurance, the purchase of a new home or rental of an apartment, even things like a teenager mowing a lawn or baby-sitting for a neighbor.

This will be super popular. I say we put it to a vote right now. Everyone who doesn't work at CNBC, come on down!

The article does note, all party-pooper like that-

And, to most tax experts who have looked at the proposal, it is anything but fair. For one, its burden would fall disproportionately on middle-income people.

And that means that the burden is lifted off of.... ahh, there we go.

Moving on, let's look at Rudy Giuliani, because lord knows, primary voters so far haven't, so somebody should throw him a bone before he starts telling some 9/11 anecdote. Via Washington Monthly, here's Rudy's plan-

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has proposed what he called a multitrillion-dollar tax cut that would (1) lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent....(2) reduce the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 10 percent....(3) preserve the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush....(4) eliminate the estate tax....(5) give taxpayers the option of choosing a simplified tax form with three tax brackets with a maximum bracket of 30 percent....(6) index the alternative minimum tax to inflation and eventually repeal it.

Reread those 6 points again. Notice one thing they all have in common? One particular (and very small, specific) group of people his plan solely benefits.... and ahh, there we go again.

One blogger added about this "This plan would be huge... it would be 4% of GDP. By comparison, GWB tax cut was 1.3% of GDP. Reagan's was 1.9% of GDP." Don't worry, though, if these things create more deficits (like Reagan and Bush gave us), we have an easy out... more tax cuts!

Lord knows what crazy tax plan Mitt Romney has reprogrammed himself into supporting.

And there you go. The mythic party of fiscal responsibility has some perfect, totally fair proposals to save us from the economic mess that we're in... which they may or may not have caused themselves with their fair, perfect policies of the past 7 years. It may seem crazy, but remember that anything to the left of these proposals is socialism. Or so I've heard.