Jon Huntsman reincarnates as Calvin Coolidge
Some Democrats have been so desperate to find an alternative to Obama that they actually perked up when Jon Hunstman remarked on the unsuitability of either Romney or Perry for the presidency and when he tweeted playfully last week that, unlike Perry, he believes in both evolution and global warming. Those aren't popular notions among the Foxified, Koched-up Republican base these days. But don't get too excited. Huntsman's economic vision for America is as twisted, toxic and reactionary as Herbert Hoover's, George Bush's, Eric Cantor's, Rick Perry's or Mitt Romney's: tax cuts for the rich paired with tax increases and service cut backs for the middle class and society's most vulnerable.
Huntsman's plan, released yesterday is "as bad for the middle-class-- and as nutty-- as any proposed by his rivals. It would pay for a half-million-dollar tax break for the richest 0.1 percent of Americans with tax increases on the middle-class and new taxes on seniors, veterans, and poor families." OK... scratch that one off the list.
In an apparent attempt to eclipse all previous Republican giveaways, including the disastrous Bush tax cuts, Huntsman would drop the marginal rate paid by the richest Americans by more than a third to 23 percent-- a lower rate than rich people paid during the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations or any time since. He would also eliminate all taxes on all capital gains and dividend income-- the primary forms of income for the wealthiest Americans.
Huntsman says he will pay for this supply-side bonanza by eliminating all so-called “tax expenditures.” He probably borrowed the idea from a theoretical scenario described by the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka, the deficit commission). The Commission observed that if all tax expenditures were eliminated, income tax rates could, in theory, be consolidated into three brackets: 8, 14, and 23 percent-- the same as what Huntsman proposed today.
But the Commission only offered that scenario as a thought experiment, not as a serious proposal. In fact, no one has seriously proposed to eliminate all tax expenditures because doing so would punish seniors, the middle-class, poor families, and veterans, among others.
Huntsman either hasn’t thought through-- or doesn’t want people to know-- what eliminating all tax expenditures would actually mean. So let’s take a look at the official tax expenditure list and see what would happen if we got rid of all of them:
– All Social Security benefits would become taxable. Senior citizens that currently receive the average Social Security benefit as their primary income source (as is the case for most seniors) currently pay no income taxes on those benefits, but would under Huntsman’s plan.
– Many middle-class parents would lose child tax credits and tax benefits for education and child care that are more valuable to them than a tax rate cut.
– Huntsman’s tax plan would also eliminate the employer health insurance exclusion, which helps enable some 160 million Americans get coverage through their jobs.
– One of the most successful pro-work, anti-poverty initiatives, the Earned Income Tax Credit, would be abolished.
– Veterans pensions and disability benefits would become subject to tax, as would all military combat pay, military housing allowances and meals, workers compensation payments, public assistance benefits, and state foster care payments.
So yeah... he may not be as bad around the fringes, but Jon Huntsman is another anti-family tool of the ruling elites and their power grab for plutocracy through the GOP. Feh! I don't know if Huntsman was just shooting off his mouth-- the bombastic way rich people who inherited their wealth always do-- but he told NBC News
