The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a commission created in 2010 by President Barack Obama to identify "...policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run."[1] The commission first met on April 27, 2010.[2]posted by nomadicink at 12:23 PM on November 10, 2010 [6 favorites]
History
The original proposal for a commission came from bipartisan legislation that would have required Congress to vote on its recommendations as presented, without any amendment. In January of 2010, that bill failed in the Senate by a vote of 53-46, when six Republicans who had co-sponsored it nevertheless voted against it.[3] Thereafter, Obama established the Commission by executive order 13531.[4] Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, after his appointment to co-chair the Commission, criticized the former supporters who had voted against the bill, saying that their purpose "was to stick it to the president."[5]
Index the retirement age to longevity -- i.e., increase the retirement age to qualify for Social Security -- to age 69 by 2075.Can they fuck poor people any harder (btw, poor people haven't seen the same increases in lifespan as rich people, so increasing their retirement age really screws 'em. As would ending the EITC)
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In their first plan, called "The Zero Plan," they suggest reducing the tax brackets to three personal brackets and one corporate rate while eliminated all credits and deductions. Without any credits or deductions (including the EITC and mortgage interest deductions), the 3 tax rates would be 8, 14 and 23 percent.
The co-chairs suggest capping both government expenditures and revenue at 21% of GDP eventually.This, of course, has nothing to do with the deficit, and is all about making sure private companies can continue to profit providing basic services. For example, if we did a national, single payer healthcare plan, it would save a ton of money. People would exchange paying insurance premiums with paying taxes. And on average they'd save a ton of money. But the government GDP share would go up simply because spending would be transferred from private companies to public institutions.
Simplifying the tax code and getting rid of tons of deductions is a fantastic idea. Notice one thing they didn't include, though: taxing cap-gains as income when it comes from options paid as compensation. That's how billionare CEOs avoid paying a high tax rate. It's ridiculous.In their first plan, called "The Zero Plan," they suggest reducing the tax brackets to three personal brackets and one corporate rate while eliminated all credits and deductions. Without any credits or deductions (including the ETIC and mortgage interest deductions), the 3 tax rates would be 8, 14 and 23 percent.Yes! I'd save $500 a year on accountants' fees!
The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over from making explosives to making chemical fertilizer. After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America’s forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on the poison gases developed for war) is the product of the government’s effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes....This is documented in Food, Inc. and any number of other sources. Hybrids and fertilizer created the massive corn glut, subsidies sustain it, and we consume it as corn syrup, animal feed, and ethanol.
F1 hybrid corn is the greediest of plants, consuming more fertilizer than any other crop. Though F1 hybrids were introduced in the 1930s, it wasn’t until they made the acquaintance of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s that corn yields exploded.
Heck, a friend of mine running a commission-based 1099 sales job runs through about $120k a year, of which she only personally sees about $40k. So she triggers AMT, but you wouldn't know it to look at her bank account.Er. I may be missing something, but if you're suggesting that her incoming is roughly $40K while her cash flow for the year is $120K, I'm not sure what it has to do with personal income taxes. Unless you're talking about eliminating things like business expense deductions as part of the simplification system.
So, who loses in that scenario?1) Poor people (end of the earned income tax credit)
But at the same time it will also eliminate demand for houses where the mortgage deduction actually helps buyers. Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, places where you're paying a ton on your mortgage, so the deductions cuts the cost of owning by 10% or more.Why is it socially valuable to subsidize that crap anyway?
And you're expecting with all this extra money in people's pockets they will immediately load up on American made goods, when what they'll do instead is buy a bigger TV and shove the rest in a mattress.That's not really the point of the deficit committee, which is ostensibly about "reducing the deficit" but actually making sure that when the deficit is reduced, the burden falls on on the poor and middle class instead of the rich.
Wait! They're talking about fixing a $1.2 trillion deficit and one of their solutions is to charge admission to the Smithsonian museum. Damn, they are serious!
So although I do not necessarily want to take this argument to the limits, the Laffer Curve shows that there are times where you can actually lower tax rates and get the same or more revenue.The Laffer Curve doesn't show that you can do that. It is a visualization of a thought experiment conducted by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, two conservative economists, and a WSJ reporter.
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posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:17 PM on November 10, 2010 [1 favorite]