by Smitty
You have to admire the courage of somebody who can assert
Herman Cain is having a tough time. He had a rocky debate. His campaign centerpiece, the 9-9-9 tax plan, is being skewered.
He had a rocky debate? Are you sure he didn’t debate Bullwinkle?
What, precisely, was rocky? Any details? And who is skewering his 9-9-9 plan? Adolf Hitler? Adolf, it must be pointed out, was more worried about his girlfriend getting into the details of the 9-9-9 plan than he was worried about the plan itself.
So, one is left to wonder, Jennifer, what specific objections YOU have to the 9-9-9 plan:
9-9-9 Plan: Summary
- Removes all payroll taxes and unites all tax payers
- Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
- Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc…
- Is fair, simple, efficient, neutral, and transparent
- Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
- Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
- Exports leave our shores without the Business Tax or the Sales Tax embedded in their cost, making them world class competitive. Imports are subject to the same taxation as domestically produced goods, leveling the playing field.
- Lowest marginal rates on production
- Kills the Death Tax
- Allows immediate expensing of business investments
- Eliminates double taxation of dividends
- Increases capital formation which aids capital availability for small businesses
- Increased capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
- Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to renew our inner cities
- The pro-growth, pro-job, pro-export economic policies of the 9-9-9 PLAN equals a strong dollar policy
I’ll be honest: I haven’t worked all the math. I’m also in some agreement with Michele Bachmann: giving a new tax to DC is a joyless precedent. Herman himself may veto any mad Congress that wants to drop a 1 in front of the third 9 in the plan, but there are no guarantees for follow-on presidents.
Also, as a military chain-of-command aficionado, my preference is to empower the states more, and DC less, to rebuild the crumbled local-state-federal chain.
But let’s give the idea a little more credit than simply saying it’s being ‘skewered’. The plan as such hasn’t seen more than a minor paper cuts from a poor wee Washington Post-It. But such a brave Post-It.
Romney or Bust!
I’ll take the word of a brilliant economist like Art Laffler over Jennifer Rubin’s words any day. For what it’s worth, Jen is a “huge” Christie supporter turn Romney advocate.
I’ve never seen so many Republicans kvetching about turning hidden taxes into visible taxes as I’ve seen with the kvetching about 9-9-9. You’d think Republicans of all people would realize how dangerous hidden taxes are.
Hey, at least he has a plan. More than the other contestants on stage.
What about double taxing wages? I mean, kudos for removing double taxation on stuff like dividends, but c’mon!
The business tax is not a tax on wages. It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat it, it still does not make it true.
Hmm….lemme see.
A company sells something. It deducts the cost of what it bought from other companies. It deducts its capital investments. Then it pays a 9% tax on the rest.
Oh, right, it also paid some wages to its employees. Now, after it’s paid that 9% corporate tax, it pays its employees. Next, the employees pay 9% on their wages.
Looks like double taxation to me. You’re living in denial thinking this is not a VAT and that wages aren’t being double taxed.
You seem to be throwing terms around with no idea of what they actually mean. Herman Cain’s plan is not and has never been a VAT, and people calling it a VAT are clueless as to what a VAT actually is.
Hint: VAT stands for Value Added Tax.
Ms. Rubin works for the WaPo. She has an employer to please and likely a mortgage to pay.
The good thing is the people have 3 plans to consider:
Cain’s 9-9-9
Paul’s Cut-5-&-$1T
Obama’s… Pelos…Rei… some variation on Marx’s ‘Loot everyone in the name of equality, pay back those who show you love.’
For myself, Paul’s plan lacks detail, such as paying for the transition of public lands to private ownership, or is Paul promoting the return feudal demesnes?
Please, allow me to quote the 9-9-9 study at Cain’s page (pdf):
Are you calling Herman Cain a liar?
When Jennifer Rubin speaks…
She is pretty much in the bag for Romney. She is a female version of Hugh Hewitt, but not as gushy at K-Lo.
No, I’m calling you an idiot for confusing analysis with terminology.
The standard European VAT involves tracking the value of Every. Single. Item. The. Company. Touches.
Cain’s tax does none of that.
I suppose you think Christian Scientists are both Christians and scientists too.
Yeah, and you’re an idiot for ignoring the bigger point. I’ve conceded that it’s easier to track, but so what?
You’re still taxing the same things, and you’re taxing wages twice.
Has anyone ever claimed that Cain proposed a tax exactly like Britain or France or anyone like that? No? Then why do you keep bringing up this strawman argument?
But don’t worry about that, she will pivot and join Allah, Ace, Hewitt, K-Lo, Lowry, the State of Florida, the MSM, and the rest in making sure their man Mitt makes it to his rendezvous with destiny!
You’ve accused Herman Cain of it every time you’ve called it a VAT, so look in the mirror, Buckaroo Banzai. What you call ‘easier to track’ I call ‘not being a sucking black hole of bureaucracy’.
Under your logic any business that makes a profit is already paying double taxes on wages, so the points you keep repeating as if we haven’t heard them 3048957602389467 times already are completely bogus.
Total fabrication. I’ve said several times that Cain’s VAT differs from European VATs in just this way. You just need a strawman argument apparently.
WTF are you talking about? Under the current system, wages are deducted from sales before taxes are paid. I hate repeating them, too, but for some reason you keep spreading misinformation that contradicts reality.
It seems to me that a prudent safeguard to increasing the sales tax by any future congress or president would be to include a requirement that it would have to be approved like a Constitutional Amendment. Just sayin’ …
Come on, that’s too easy . . . Romney or Rule 5? Heck, Cain would have a hard time topping Rule 5.
“Herman himself may veto any mad Congress that wants to drop a 1 in front
of the third 9 in the plan, but there are no guarantees for follow-on
presidents.”
There are no guarantees about spare 1’s being dropped anywhere in the tax code at anytime already. Does the 9-9-9 Plan need tweaking? Almost assuredly, but the rat’s maze of a tax code we have now is much too complex, fraught with hidden gems and traps, and enabling of an entire industry built around creating and then closing loopholes. Just simplifying the code would enrich the nation and make business/people more efficient.
What we have has to go. Kudos to Cain for having the guts to actually propose reform, yet another of the reforms everyone else talks about but is too cowardly or craven to address. Both He and Paul Ryan deserve the utmost praise for stepping up to the plate for their respective reforms even if their first drafts are rejected. We’ll never get perfect, but let’s at least not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
By nature, Jennifer Rubin is a follower. It’s the job of more original thinkers to explain to the Rubins of the world the flaws in her thinking, arguments that she is neglecting, etc. When presented by superior arguments/ideas, the Rubins will pretend to resist at first, but will be influenced nonetheless.
The problem is we have a relative shortage of original thinkers on the right – at least among the living, recognized cadre. Jonan Goldberg? So, Rubin is usually influenced by stale “progressives” and stale (establishment) “conservatives.”
And as for Ruben, I’ve had sandwiches with a better beef.
http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/09/who-is-kejda-gjermani-is-she-actually.html
Kejda Giermani works with Jen Rubin at Commentary. Just sayin…
Companies don’t pay taxes. The cost of the tax to be paid, and the cost of processing the tax, is passed on to the customers. And the company usually collects interest off of the money being held to pay the tax.
So this tax plan isn’t 9-9-9, it’s more like 0-0-27. A number which is eerily close to Boortz’s Fair Tax.
The more debate I hear about 9-9-9 the less simple it appears.
Flat tax, eliminate most immediately then phase out all remaining deductions.
As Ed Koch said “I can explain it to you, I can’t comprehend it for you”
While Stacy is taking self-congratulation to new levels, I caution him and other Cain supporters take this criticism seriously. Cain risks everything with his simplistic sales approach. I’m not sold — though I want to be.
He needs to directly and effectively address the criticisms of the plan, and describe it’s big-picture benefits with greater clarity. Just repeating the mantra ‘9-9-9’ makes him sound like a huckster. Apparently the firm that analyzed the plan only did a ‘revenue neutral’ analysis and not a ‘distributional’ analysis of how it would affect different groups. Why not? Is this in the works? One would expect a serious candidate would anticipate that this important issue would come up, and be prepared to address it immediately in a serious manner. So far, this has been woefully inadequate on Cain’s part.
Campaigns are won by doing the defining first, rather than being defined. Criticisms unaddressed can easily become definitions.
Cain (and Stacy) seem oblivious to this, and there is a serious danger now of being defined as ‘half-baked’.
Stop listening to the applause and focus on the very real pitfalls.
“Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so”
With a 9% retail sales tax? Less incentive or opportunity to evade?
That’s laughable.
Not a fan of “Empowerment Zones” sounds touchy feely in addition to being a way to insert social policy into tax policy which is the major failing of current tax policy. As soon as the possibility of special carve outs exists funding for lobbyists materializes and they begin to swarm.
I believe Cain has said the 9-9-9 plan is transitional to the fair tax. The beauty of a national sales tax is that folks see immediately what they’re paying, rather than the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach we get with withholding. With the tax’s visibility, it will become much harder to increase taxes. In fact, I expect people to start compaining that 9% is too much.
I have an idea! Let’s bitch for years about the status quo, then bitch some more when someone comes up with a proposal to change it. Folks, if we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got.
And furthermore, it’s ridiculous to call Cain’s sales tax a VAT. Try to keep up.
If Cain’s plan is revenue neutral, how does it fix our spending / debt problem?
Yep. I;ll vote for Cain if he gets the nomination, but I’m not going to pretend he’s a small government conservative. He’s just another big government Republican.
Yeah. I think that was the spoonful of sugar to help the vinegar go down. No question that’s a huge opening for abuse.
The problem with Cain’s plan is that it’s too complicated to tell what the problems with it are.
Tax reform should be about eliminating, reducing and simplifying taxes, not about coming up with catchy new names for catchy new clusterfucks.
Well, it’s less radical than my cancellation of the 16th Amendment and having DC bill the states.
It won’t realize that end. That helps sell it to the liberals who won’t buy it in any case. I read a good post yesterday at ACE’s on the evils of compromise. If the Republicans win the WH and the Senate, expect even less cooperation from the wrong side of the isle than the SDs got from us. This stopped being politics a long time ago we are in the midst of a relatively non-violent (at least for the moment) civil war.
No compromise, No retreat, No quarter, No Surrender.
http://minx.cc/?post=322790
No type of tax reform is an alternative to cutting spending or butchering the beast of regulation and it’s enablers.
Any tax reform will have unintended consequences, since we know how bad the status quo is, I’m willing to give something, anything a shot and see what happens.
That is actually good advice. And Stacy knows it.
Smitty,
Nothing wrong with radical! Your proposal has several virtues. Of course, Adobe is right that any change will have unintended — and unforeseen — consequences, but one of the nice things about your proposal is that 50 different entities get to tackle the problem, so hopefully the various disasters would be set off by a gem or two.
I suspect that Perry will start rising in the polls if he puts real mojo behind his flat tax proposal versus Romney’s 54-point thingum and Cain’s convoluted idea that includes a new tax and has already managed to turn a catchy slogan into a migraine for anyone who tries to actually figure out what it means.
Just for perspective on the Ruben agenda…
She has attacked Perry much more than Cain, and she was actually half way supportive of Bachmann during the summer. She was very supportive of a possible Ryan campaign before he declared he was out.
Feudal demesnes would be much more enlightened than slowly but surely surrendering federal lands to the econuts.
Perry has already got Steve Forbes on his side regarding the flat tax proposal, though he has yet to endorse Perry. In fact I think Forbes has helped put Perry’s plan together.
A Forbes endorsement would be a big deal for Perry. Maybe not a game-changer, but a definite boost.
It might be especially helpful at busting Cain up a little right about now with the abortion thing (I seem to recall that Forbes is pretty hardcore pro-life, so if he came out saying “Perry’s tax plan makes more sense, and he’s also solid on abortion,” that could cut into Cain’s base big-time).
Cain has his shot, but if he’s going to hold on to what he’s picked up so far, he’s going to have to get simpler, more direct, less evasive. If he doesn’t, someone — maybe Perry, maybe someone else — will skin him alive, soon.
You talking about Jen Rubin? She was for Fatty McAwesome before she went for Romney. She is establishment GOP all the way. She has to be. Podhoretz does not pay enough at Commentary and she needs to suck up to the big papers and for the speaking tours.
Cain needs to step up. Otherwise, he’s history.
Rapidly.
He hasn’t mentioned abortion or anything else other than the tax policy, at least not that I’m aware of. When I watched him earlier today, he was explaining that a flat tax would be an easier sell, and a lot less complicated than a fair tax, which would invite all kinds of disputes over what would we exempt from the tax, like food, would there be prebates, etc. Pretty much the same stuff I pointed out here a while back. And its true, by the time everybody got through slicing and dicing it, Cain’s plan would be a big mess, and that’s even assuming it was passed in any form at all.
“He hasn’t mentioned abortion or anything else other than the tax policy, at least not that I’m aware of.”
I’m not sure whether you’re referring to Perry or Forbes there, but they’ve both said plenty about abortion.
I was just positing that if Forbes came out behind Perry with a full endorsement, not just on the flat tax but basically touting his pro-life credentials, that could be a big boost for Perry.
Actually, either one could be a big boost for Perry, but the abortion thing would be an extra knee to Cain’s nuts — it’s an opportune moment, so to speak.
Or, the moment might get away and Cain may get another shot or two to start looking presidential instead of like Jimmy McMillan with a shave.
Agree with all LCR says, but…
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280725/can-cain-do-it-robert-costa?pg=2http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280725/can-cain-do-it-robert-costa?pg=2http:
And btw, that 9-9-9 Summary, in the article:
Sucks…. Sell Benefits,…… not Features.
And Cain is sending people to the website………to read that?
I believe Cain decided the same thing and now calls them “opportunity zones” – personally, I always liked Kemp’s original designation of “enterprise zones.”
AFL/CIO Commissar Richard Trumka was on TV attacking the idea, saying that eliminating minimum wage endangered workers everywhere because “you can’t raise a family on $6 an hour.”
Whenever that fat-assed crook takes time out of his busy day rousing rabble and raiding the pension fund to attack your plan, you’ve arrived, baby – but have somebody else start your car.