Gang Of Sixer, Sen. Chambliss, Proves His Liberalism

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia always seemed a weak sister.

Now he's proved it once and for all, here, and here, by repudiating his pledge to vote against tax rate increases.

That's an alarming development for Republicans because it indicates that Chambliss is not just threatening to vote for more revenues from deduction limitations, but for more revenues from tax rate increases.

Look at it this way: a vote for tax increases is a vote to maintain the status quo, which can only mean more of the same, including further increased prices for commodities, which is at the center of Sen. Chambliss' unholy alliances.

Follow the money people! This guy doesn't care about the country. He only cares about himself!

WaPo Repeats The Big Lie: "There Are Just Not Enough Tax Breaks To Close For The Rich"

Here:

"[T]here are just not enough tax breaks to close for the rich, and the big money is in those for middle-income taxpayers."

The leftist drumbeat to raise taxes on the middle class just never ends.

But it's not just their agenda, it's the agenda of Republicans and libertarians, and it flies under the radar of "tax reform" and "broadening the base". Its most passionate advocates in the Republican Party are people like Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan, and certain members of the Gang of Six and the Gang of Twelve, you know, like Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The Stupid Party is stupid because the rank and file of America end up voting for this liberalism all the time. But those elected officials aren't stupid. They know exactly what they are doing and how it works.

You promise lower marginal tax rates across the board in exchange for giving up some tax deductions. Then as time passes the Democrats get the government in their hands again and raise taxes. But those lost deductions? They remain lost, and overall the tax burden on the middle class increases. It's what happened in 1986 with the loss of deductibility of interest on revolving credit in exchange for tax reform which lowered rates. But along came Bill Clinton in 1992 and up went the taxes. To help pay for things during the recession which Clinton's higher taxes made worse, middle class Americans tapped home equity like crazy, which was the rope Republicans furnished to hang us with. And now look at us, tapped out like never before with owners' equity in real estate down to 41 percent, facing a bunch of traitors on our side who want more money to misspend.

Tax collectors for the welfare state is who they are, to borrow a phrase from a recent Republican candidate for president who really let us down by not using it during the primary season.

As usual, conservatism's worst enemies are in their own party.

I'm getting just a little sick of it, too, primarily because there is a HUGE pool of tax revenue forfeited by the government which amounts to a gift to the top third of income earners in America. In 2012 everything earned above $110,100 escapes Social Security taxation. That's roughly $2 trillion which flies under the tax radar. At 15.3 percent, that's the biggest tax loss expenditure out there by far: $306 billion of lost revenue to the federal government because high-income earners don't pay it. The mortgage interest deduction, by contrast, is less than a third of that.

Conservatives want the misspending stopped. Until it is, tax increases are off the table.

The Left's True Objective Is Higher Taxes On Middle Class: Citizen Cohn Admits It

Say whatever you want about Romney's tax numbers not adding up, the objective of the left in America is to raise taxes on the middle class, precisely because government spending as projected going forward cannot be paid for without it.

So Jonathan Cohn, here:

To reiterate something I've said before, I happen to support higher taxes for the middle class, at least over the long term, assuming they are part of a balanced deficit reduction approach that preserves Medicare, Social Security, and other critical programs. In an ideal world, Obama would make a case for precisely that sort of agenda, because without those higher taxes (above and beyond taxing the rich, as Obama has proposed) government won't have enough money to fund future spending obligations. But it's hard to fault Obama for not presenting the full facts about fiscal tradeoffs when the other side has shown repeatedly that it doesn't care about facts at all.

Conservatives need to make the point that government spending even at Rep. Paul Ryan levels is unaffordable without tax hikes on the middle class.

All the talk in the Republican Party about broadening the tax base is really about eliminating tax loss expenditures in order to raise revenues. In other words, taking away the deductibility of mortgage interest expenses, state and local income tax expenses, and the like. If it walks like a tax increase and talks like a tax increase, it's a tax increase, whether it's brought to you by the Gang of Six, the Gang of Twelve, or Mitt Romney.

The Stupid Party is about to vote for this again and the left knows it, which is why they are so happy. People like Jonathan Cohn know a Romney presidency will help achieve their goal, so it really doesn't matter if Obama loses. Unless conservatives take over the Republican National Convention and give the nomination to someone who will actually protect the middle class, taxes on the 66 percent of America which earns less than $100K per year are going up, up, up.

Conservatives need to remember what happened last time we fell for this gimmickry. Ronald Reagan agreed to eliminate deductibility of consumer interest in the 1986 tax reform in exchange for lower rates. We lost that deductibility and got the lower rates, but when Democrat Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, we didn't get back the deductibility. The same thing will happen again. We'll sacrifice deductibility of something else in exchange for lower tax rates, which liberals later will succeed in raising the next time they have power, putting the middle class even farther behind than it is now.

We didn't get back the deductibility lost in 1986 under George Bush in 2001, and we won't in future if we answer the siren call of broadening the tax base again.

Michael Barone Joins The Liberal Chorus Attacking Progressive Taxation

You heard me right, the liberal chorus attacking the progressive tax code, in this case the progressive tax code's deductibility provisions which are . . . well, progressive.

Barone and other liberal Republicans like Pat Toomey, Gang of Sixers and Gang of Twelvers do it on the grounds that the deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes help the $100K+ set more.

Nevermind "the rich" already pay the vast majority of the taxes. They want to make them pay even more because . . . well, they don't really need the money, and government does! And maybe liberals will like us more.

Talk about ceding the moral high ground to the left. Who would want to go to all the trouble of becoming rich just so that they can have the privilege of paying even more of the taxes?

Nevermind that the poor own one of the biggest "tax loss expenditures" in the form of transfer payments for the Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit: $109 billion. Compare that to the mortgage interest deduction's tax loss cost to the Treasury : $88 billion.

Here is Barone:

[T]he big money you can get from eliminating tax preferences comes from three provisions that are widely popular.

The three are the charitable deduction, the home mortgage interest deduction, and the state and local tax deduction. ...


[T]he vast bulk of the "tax expenditures" -- the money the government doesn't receive because taxpayers deduct mortgage interest payments from total income -- goes to high earners . . ..


Well why shouldn't they under a progressive tax system? 


There's really no difference between Michael Barone and Republican advocates for "tax reform" and Democrats like Peter Orszag, for example, who makes an argument for similarly flattening deductibility for the rich by limiting their traditional deductions enjoyed by everyone across the income spectrum. What this amounts to is an admission that the progressive deductibility which we have now does NOT go hand in hand with the tax code's progressive taxation.

The current arrangement may not seem fair to flat taxers, but it is internally consistent. If you pay progressively more in taxes, your deductions should justly be progressively worth more to you. And so they are. If you pay progressively less in taxes, your deductions should justly be worth less to you, progressively. And so they are.

Proposals to limit deductions for one class of taxpayers amount to destroying the internal coherence of the progressive tax code itself. It is nothing less than an attack on the idea of progressivity and its fair unfairness, all in the name of extracting even more from the pockets of successful people.

Sheer nincompoopery. 

Tax Reform Had Better Be Revenue Neutral, Otherwise No Thanks

Louis Woodhill isn't fooled by Gang of Six types, Gang of Twelve types, or any other types looking for increased revenues from tax reform flying under the banner of eliminating tax loss expenditures while making the Bush brackets permanent:

Republicans want to reform the tax code and broaden the tax base in return for lower tax rates.  However, they must insist that such reform be (at most) “revenue neutral”, because an effort to get more revenue via reform would mean higher tax rates, and therefore lower economic growth.  An increment of economic growth provides somewhere between 27 times and infinitely more benefit to federal finances than raising taxes.  So, no thanks.

And he says No Thanks to about seven other things, too, here.

Sen. Rob Portman Will Shill for Gang of Six Taxes on Gang of Twelve

There's Portman on July 21 giving aid and comfort to the Gang of Six enemy while the US House is trying to push the only true plan to cut spending:

The bipartisan “Gang of Six” proposal on the deficit continues to draw attention from rank-and-file senators, even as House leaders come out in opposition to any plan that includes new revenues as part of a deal.

“It's a step in the right direction,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who was budget director under President George W. Bush, told us on ABC’s “Top Line” today. “It's the one effort out there where you've got Republicans and Democrats coming together. And I think it could actually mesh well with what I think is the ultimate solution here with regard to the debt limit increase.”

While many Republicans are pushing back against the notion of including revenues as part of any deal, Portman said tax reform must be built in to a bipartisan solution.

“We've signed up to the concept that we do need a bipartisan approach here, and it's got to deal with tax reform, and it's got to deal with the long-term problem -- which is sustainability of these entitlement programs,” Portman said.

The Gang of Six Types Attack Savers

They want to cap "combined employee/employer pre-tax contributions to 401(k)s at $20,000 or 20 percent of income, whichever is lower. That would be a substantial cut in deductibility, since the employee deduction alone currently is capped at $16,500 (savers over age 50 can make additional $5,500 “catch-up” contributions)."

Just one of the ways the greedy feds want to extract more revenue from people as they age.

You'll find more of this discussed, here.

Larry Kudlow is No Conservative: Another Voice Impeding the Tea Party

So-called conservatives like Lawrence Kudlow insist, INSIST!, that Barack Obama is a liberal, not a socialist.

Wake up, Kudlow: The deficit is triple what it was under a real liberal, George W. Bush, and you call that more liberalism!

Which is why Kudlow, even today, keeps defending plans like the one from the Gang of Six. That plan's baseline assumes the expiration of the Bush tax rates, which means a reset UP of the tax rates. A cut from that is a cut, except relative to the rates from which it represents a tax increase.

GET ON THE RIGHT, KUDLOW!

Cut taxes, you moron.

And slash, SLASH!, spending.

Build submarines and satellites to project American power, and drill here. We don't need boots on the ground in what, 170 countries?!

This is so easy my fifth grader could beat you.

Senator Saxby Chambliss Doesn't Tell The Whole Truth About Tax Loss Expenditures

On the Sean Hannity program today Senator Chambliss claimed that under Ronald Reagan tax loss expenditures were eliminated as part of a lowering and broadening of the tax base in 1986.

The top income tax bracket eventually fell to 28 percent for a very brief time as a result of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 under Reagan's successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who subsequently went on to break his no new taxes pledge, paving the way for tax increases under his successor, Bill Clinton, proving that broad low tax rates can be as ephemeral as any other part of the tax code.

The senator from Georgia today claimed that the current plan of his Gang of Six was proposing the scaling-back of similar tax loss expenditures enjoyed by taxpayers in the same spirit of Reagan. For example, the Gang wants to reduce the deductibility of home mortgage interest and charitable contributions in exchange for a lower income tax rate.

But the senator is pulling a fast one with the facts. Reagan didn't just eliminate some tax loss expenditures and reduce income tax rates in exchange. He in fact broadened at the same time the mortgage interest deduction in order to encourage home ownership, something entirely missing from the Gang of Six plan:

Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the interest on all personal loans (including credit card debt) was deductible. TRA86 eliminated that broad deduction, but created the narrower home mortgage interest deduction under the theory that it would encourage home ownership.

I remember at the time how unfair I thought it was to lose the deductibility of credit card interest until I realized how an equity line of credit based on home ownership could and in fact did replace the role credit cards and other lines of credit had played in the tax equation before 1986. The change was also noteworthy because it encouraged the acquisition and use of secured equity instead of the use of mere credit secured only by income and creditworthiness.

Senator Chambliss' plan will eliminate tax deductibility of home mortgage interest without replacing it with anything to encourage home ownership.

And if there's anything America needs more right now, it's jobs and family formation to soak up the excess housing inventory. All Chambliss' plan will do is worsen the economic circumstances of current homeowners, who are already struggling with upside down loans and declining real estate values.

It's time conservatives recaptured the importance of home ownership as a social good. Unfortunately, the ideas of the Gang of Six do anything but. And whatever else they are, they aren't Reaganite. 

Obama Grasps at Straws, Seizes on Gang of Six Pricks Plan

Reported here:

President Barack Obama ... lauded a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that includes $1 trillion in higher taxes ... [S]tocks soared for the day, propelled by the deficit plan's emergence and Obama's decision to seize on it as well as by strong earnings reports.


And elsewhere, this:

"You're elected executive to lead. And I think it's incumbent on the president to put the plan out there. You cannot wait for members of a legislative body to lead. The executive has an obligation to lead."

-- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie