Off to conference in D.C at which Netanyahu and Sec. Perry will appear.
I expect Perry will tell the audience what it wants to hear and it will all prove smoke and mirrors because Obama is going to allow Iran the luxury of going nuclear.
I expect Perry will tell the audience what it wants to hear and it will all prove smoke and mirrors because Obama is going to allow Iran the luxury of going nuclear.
Last memo for a while because our new grandson should also be born in the next several days.
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David Horowitz was a certified hippy, far out Liberal and then he got tired of drinking their Kool Aid and became a conservative. (See 1 below.)
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Now listen to this and see if you can keep from tapping your toes:
Tennessee Football Coach fired for making Obama song. He'll make more money when this song becomes a big hit than he would teaching school.
Tennessee middle school assistant football coach, age 26, fired for a song he wrote and played!
This could be the next number one hit country song. It's the best effort yet at encapsulating the outrage at the oversteps of this government in an entertaining song.
Apparently, the guy was fired over the song because some parents complained. If you like it, help it go "viral" by passing it along to everyone you know.
Click for a Great Song!!!
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Women can be Pinocchio's too. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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This from a dear friend who just returned from a visit to Israel:
"Dick, I think my recent trip to Israel allows me to understand America, politics, and why this country is going down. if u just compare the average Israeli working at the airport in the most basic security position to the average TSA agent, it is clear. the 26 year old Israeli as described in the Start Up Nation is intelligent and gives a S.... It's that simple. R--" === Jewish Humor:
=== Finally, there is an old story abut a man who wanted to buy a horse. He goes to a horse farm and sees a beautiful black gelding in the middle of a pack of horses. He tells the farm owner he wants to buy the black gelding. The farm owner replies you can't buy that black gelding because he is holding up all the other horses. America is the world's black gelding and Obama's decision to shrink America, bring it down to size because of his radical contempt for our nation's history will have severe repercussions leading to wars, economic tragedies and more grief. This, among other reasons, is why I oppose Obama. He is a dangerous man, probably the most dangerous president and anti-American this nation has ever endured.(See 3 below.) In the upcoming election Republicans need a bar bell strategy. On the one hand they should continue to oppose Obamacare and if they gain control of The Senate they should work to correct the legislation's many flaws and I have addressed my rationale and suggested reforms in previous memos. At the other end of the bar bell they must work for real tax reform which includes simplification, elimination of perks and lowering rates . (See 3a below.) ===- Dick |
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Why Republicans Need the Tea Party
The movement provides an answer to the Left.
The movement provides an answer to the Left.
By David Horowitz
Can the marriage between the Tea Party and the GOP survive?
My answer is: It better. The White House is occupied by a lifelong anti-American radical who has done more to bankrupt this nation’s economy, take us down as a military power, and destroy individual liberty than anyone would have thought possible in January 2009 when he took office. And it’s worse than that. Obama is the head of a Democratic party that has moved so far to the left over the last 46 years that it has become anti–free market, anti-individualist, anti-constitutionalist, and unready to defend America’s sovereign interests at home and abroad. We cannot afford to let such a party run our government for another four or eight years. The world cannot afford it.
So how do we hold together the conservative coalition opposing this national suicide? How do we make this marriage survive? First of all, by recognizing that the basic difference between the Tea Party and the Republican party is a matter of tactics and temperament, not policy and ideology. To understand what I mean by this, one has to go back to the flashpoint that has made the possibility of a Republican schism a topic of the day: the famous alleged government shutdown by tea-party hero Ted Cruz. I probably should acknowledge here that I am a huge fan of what the Tea Party represents, though not always what it does. I believe the emergence of the Tea Party is the most important political development in conservatism in the last 25 years, and is possibly the last best hope for our country.
You might ask yourself this question: What would have happened if the Republican party and the Tea Party and the big PACs run by Rove and Koch had funded a $30 million campaign to put the blame on Obama and Reid, where it belonged? There was no such campaign. All the parties on our side failed to take the fight to the enemy camp. The finger-pointing that followed is just another example of the circular firing squad that we on the right are so good at and that continually sets us back.
Here’s a second important point that applies to all the frictions between tea partiers and Republican regulars. The conflict among the Right about the Obama shutdown was not about policy. It was about tactics. Every Republican in Congress is opposed to Obamacare, with no exceptions. Not a single Republican legislator voted for it. Not a single Republican legislator would support it. The issue is how best to defeat the Democrats and repeal a monstrous law — how to defeat the socialist party that now controls our government and is hell-bent on bankrupting our country, crippling our military, and destroying the culture of individualism and opportunity that has made this nation what it is.
Understanding that what divides us is tactical, not fundamental, is crucial to keeping the marriage alive. A tactical difference is no grounds for divorce.
Another important point to understand is that there is a difference between politics and policy. Republicans (and I would include conservatives and tea partiers) are good at policy; they are not so good at politics, which is the way one gets to make policy. Do we repeal Obamacare by obstructing it at every turn? Or do we repeal it by lying low until we have a majority and abolishing it at a stroke? And if we lie low, do we demoralize our troops, who see us as compromisers and appeasers, and in effect give up the chance of ever winning a majority and accomplishing our goal? These are the questions that divide us. They are legitimate questions and — excuse me for blurting this out — no one knows the answers. Politics is always a gamble. No one can be sure of what will succeed, which is why we have to respect each other and keep our coalition strong, even though we disagree.
I said we were not so good at politics. Actually we’re terrible at politics. Whenever a Republican and a Democrat square off it’s like Godzilla versus Bambi. They call us racists, sexists, homophobes, and selfish pigs, and we call them . . . liberals. Who’s going to win that argument? They spend their political dollars calling us names and shredding our reputations; we spend ours explaining why the complicated solutions we propose will work and why theirs won’t. But when you are being called a racist, an enemy of women, and a greedy SOB, who do you think is listening to your ideas about the budget? Who is going to believe you when all your motives are ulterior and degenerate?
This is the problem that not only Republicans, but also tea partiers and conservatives, have failed to address. It is why the Democratic party, which supports policies that are morally repugnant and have also failed on an epic scale, still wins elections. Medicare is bankrupt and a mess; Social Security is bankrupt and a mess; the War on Poverty is a trillion-dollar catastrophe that has created worse poverty than it was designed to cure — and yet Democrats can still win elections, and can pass the biggest socialist entitlement and redistributionist scheme ever and get away with it. Until Republicans and tea partiers start to fight fire with fire, this scenario is not going to change. Twenty-five years after the most oppressive empire in human history collapsed because socialist economics don’t work, 49 percent of American youth, according to a recent Pew poll, think socialism is a good system. That’s a political failure on our part. We won the Cold War, but we didn’t drive the stake through the Communist heart. As a result, the vampire of “social justice” has risen again.
Another way of looking at the problem is that the Republican party — like conservatives generally — is guided by a business mentality, whereas the Left’s mentality is missionary. Let me explain what I mean. Democrats, progressives, so-called liberals see themselves as social redeemers. They don’t approach social problems pragmatically, looking for ways to improve this situation or that, except as a political expedient. They approach social problems with an eye to changing the world. Hillary Clinton once told the New York Times that “we have to define what it means to be human in the 21st century.” No Republican or conservative in his right mind talks like that. On the eve of his election, Barack Obama said, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” People in their right minds don’t think like that. Unless they are progressives who believe that they are “on the side of history” and the “moral arc of the universe is bent towards justice.” That particular phrase is woven into a carpet that Obama has installed in the Oval Office.
Leftists are secular missionaries whose paradise is called “social justice.” The pursuit of social justice is why the Democratic party set out to radically transform a sixth of the American economy and regulate the health care of 300 million Americans from a website without the support of a single Republican and in the face of majority opposition from the people at large.
The Democratic party has become a dangerous party. It is driven by the missionary Left, backed by the billions of George Soros and his Shadow Partyfriends, and it regards politics as war conducted by other means. That is why Democrats can say — and believe — that Republicans are conducting wars against women, minorities, and the poor, while Republicans refer to them as liberals and patiently explain to them why their policies won’t work. If explaining why their policies won’t work were politically effective, they’d be out of business. Socialism doesn’t work, central planning doesn’t work. These ideas ruined whole continents. Why haven’t Democrats learned from that? It is because they are missionaries, and their politics is a religion that provides them with a meaning for their lives. They are the prophets of a social redemption, a future in which the meaning of being human has been redefined and social justice prevails.
Because their politics is inspirational, every failure along the way is regarded as a glitch. The cause is noble, and they cannot allow it to be derailed by a failure of any of its parts. After a century of corpses and ruined continents, “socialist” should be just another name for delusional. So should “progressive.” And yet these are the fantasies that drive the Democratic party today.
By contrast, a business mentality is pragmatic and its expectations modest. It is not looking to change the world we live in but to service the actual beings who inhabit it. It sets out to meet their needs within the parameters that are set by human capabilities and desires. When a businessman is delusional, when his expectations exceed the capacities of the marketplace, the market punishes him — and punishes him without mercy.
A business approach is fundamentally positive. To succeed it must meet the expectations of others. Where possible it wants to avoid conflict and the alienation of others; it is looking to maximize customers and expand markets, and therefore to make deals. A businessman would rather buy you out or merge with you than crush you. When obstacles present themselves, it is cheaper, and in the long run more productive, to compromise and find a way around them.
This is the mentality of our Washington insiders. A way of looking at the schism between the Tea Party and the Republican party is that the Tea Party, which is an upstart, is driven more by the missionary mentality, while the Republican party is more of a business establishment with a business temperament and approach. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are dealmakers, not game-changers.
The catch is that this is probably not the best mentality to hold when the opposition is a missionary party that views politics as war and that is out for your blood. In these circumstances, an equal and opposite force — a missionary force — may be required to defeat it. The grassroots understands this, which is why and how the Tea Party was born, and why a maverick like Ted Cruz was able to defeat the strongest Republican establishment in Texas — the most important Republican state — and become its senator.
The Tea Party’s mission is not parallel to that of the political Left. It is not about creating a new race of human beings or a new social order. Its mission is closer to the realism of business. Its mission is to defend something familiar and real — a Constitution that has been shredded, a culture that has been traduced, and an economy that is heading for bankruptcy. This doesn’t mean that tea partiers should be unmindful of the dangers that missionary ideas bring with them. Good principles don’t guarantee good candidates or winning politics. Some tea-party losses in the last election hurt the conservative cause and could have been avoided if the distinctions were kept in mind.
The very fact that the Tea Party is missionary, that it is organized as a cause, makes its demands and actions seem impractical and even extreme to business-as-usual Republicans. This is inevitable. In order to change things you have to take positions that seem unrealistic and may even seem extreme. It’s the nature of change, and the Tea Party is about change. And in fact it is already changing something.
What it is changing is the Republican party. Without the Tea Party there would be no Ted Cruz, no Rand Paul, no Mike Lee. If the Tea Party were not challenging the Republican establishment and causing conflict, it would have no reason for being.
Not only do I believe that Cruz’s stand on the Senate floor did not injure the chances of a Republican victory in 2014, I believe it enhanced them. Because it lit a fire in the Republican base and showed the rank and file that there are Republicans ready to fight. This is what our voters most want to see. Both McCain and Romney lost because they failed to create the passion among Republican voters that gets them to the polls. Too many Republicans — too many conservatives — sat on their hands. And why not, since both McCain and Romney assured them that Obama was “a good man.” No he isn’t. He’s a compulsive, brazen liar and a human wrecking ball blasting the structures and foundations of a great nation.
A question you’re probably asking is how the Tea Party can succeed as a caucus within the Republican party. How great are the changes it can achieve? Can Republicans like Boehner and McConnell be changed? (That is, if they are not unseated in primaries or by votes in their caucuses.) Well, if my analysis is correct, both men have a business mentality and can appreciate the realities of power. So my answer is yes. If the grassroots mobilizes and the Tea Party gains critical mass, they can be changed. That’s what politics is about.
In fact, that is precisely the way the Democratic party was changed over the last five decades: by grassroots extremists who first attacked the party and then infiltrated it. The radicals infiltrated the party during the McGovern campaign and over the ensuing years transformed it from the party of John F. Kennedy, who had politics identical to those of Ronald Reagan, into the party of Barack Obama, whose political comrades were the anti-American racist Jeremiah Wright and the anti-American terrorist Bill Ayers.
So how do we fight fire with fire? How do we go from a party that is eager to explain to Democrats why their policies won’t work but reluctant to call them out for who they are, to a party that will go toe-to-toe and hammer-and-tongs with them and defeat their politics of personal and political destruction? Another way to put this is: How do we develop a political weapon that matches and neutralizes theirs, in particular the claim that we are waging a war against women, minorities, and the poor?
Actually, it’s not that difficult if you are willing to be aggressive, if you are willing to match their rhetoric and be called extremist for doing so. Every inner city in America of size is run by Democrats and has been for 50 to 100 years. Detroit is a good example. It is 85 percent black. Fifty years ago it was per capita the richest city in America, the industrial jewel of an industrial superpower. Fifty years ago Democrats came to power in Detroit and began implementing their plans for social justice.
Fifty years of progressive policies and Democratic rule has bankrupted Detroit, and ruined it. A third of its population is on welfare. Half its population is unemployed. Its per-capita income has plummeted so far that it is now the poorest large city in America. It has been depopulated. More than half the people who lived there are gone. Everyone has fled who can. It is a giant slum of human misery and despair. And Democrats did it. Democrats are Detroit’s slumlords and the authors of the racist policies that have reduced a once great city to its present squalid state. Democrats are cynical liars and rank hypocrites when they claim to be interested in the well-being of minorities and the poor, whose necks bear the marks of their boot heels.
Fighting fire with fire means throwing the Democrats’ atrocities — their exploitation and devastation of black and brown Americans — in their faces every time they open their mouths. It means accusing them of destroying the lives of millions of poor black and Hispanic children who are trapped in the public schools that don’t educate them — schools the Democrats run as jobs programs for adults and slush funds for their political campaigns. It means taking up the cause of the victims and indicting progressives for their crimes. The one thing it does not mean is business as usual.
— David Horowitz is the author of The Black Book of the American Left, which will encompass ten volumes when it is completed. The first volume, My Life & Times, was published November 5.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2) Sebelius Denies 7 Million Was Obamacare's Target
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday that the administration never had a 7 million enrollment target for Obamacare, backtracking on comments she made last year volunteering that figure.
"First of all, 7 million was not the administration. That was a CBO, Congressional Budget Office prediction when the bill was first signed," Sebelius said in an interview with HuffPost Live.
"I'm not quite sure where they even got their numbers. Their numbers are all over the board, and the vice president has looked and said it may be closer to 5 to 6."
The comments appear to contradict what she told NBC News the day before the launch of the troubled healthcare site last fall when she said that "success," in her opinion, would be having 7 million Americans enrolled in the Obamacare exchanges by the end of March.
"I think success looks like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of March 2014," Sebelius told NBC's Nancy Snyderman on Sept. 30.
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer blasted Sebelius in an interview Tuesday on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier."
"Of course, she was the one that said it, among others," he said. "You know, it's an old rule, 'say the truth, it's easier to memorize.'"
Krauthammer also reacted to the latest Obamacare enrollment numbers released Tuesday by the administration which confirmed that 4 million people had now signed up for the new healthcare program.
"It will usually come out in the middle of the next month except when the secretary steps all over herself and makes bad news, so you want to trump it with a nice number, a round number which comes out in the middle of a week," Krauthammer said.
This is not the first time the administration tried to backtrack on the 7 million figure. White House healthcare policy adviser Phil Schiliro said in December that attracting 7 million enrollees to Obamacare by March was never the administration's goal.
"That figure was put out by the Congressional Budget Office in March, and was never our target number," he told NBC News at the time.
2a) A LTE from a dear friend!
It seems that our current administration views lying to the American people as the new norm.
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3) Henninger: The Growth Revolutions Erupt
All future histories of the Obama presidency will analyze the phrase "leading from behind"—the idea that the U.S. superpower should behave as no more than a co-equal partner in managing the affairs of the world. Chapters will be devoted to laying this revisionist template over Libya, Syria and Iran. There is one area, though, in which the returns are already in on this new notion of American leadership: For five years, the U.S. has been leading the world economy from behind. It's not pretty.
Their “signature” legislation is drowning and gasping for air, their latest claim is that 4 million have signed up for insurance under the system. To achieve their (dramatically reduced) goal of 6 million enrollees by the end of March, they will have to put the whip to the horses.
But, since the “back end” of this contorted system is not yet in place, in reality they have absolutely no idea how many folks have actually succeeded in obtaining insurance. In the real world, insurance companies do not count enrollees as such until they have actually paid their first month’s insurance, and the check has cleared. Not so in government, and in particular this administration.
One thing we do know for certain, and that is that 4.7 million citizens have had their existing plans cancelled by the insurance companies because they do not meet the minimum standard of Obamacare. That, on the surface, sounds like a great deal … protection for the consumer from the evil and greedy capitalists.
Not really. I am a single male and 72 years old and to be acceptable, my policy will have to offer coverage for pregnancy. My pregnancy? Probably wouldn’t need insurance as I could surely make big bucks on a book and personal appearances.
Thus disappears the savings promised of $2500 per family.
One of our nation’s leaders famously said, during the one-party approval of this absurd legislation “we will have to pass it to find out what is in it.” Our nation’s founders must be turning uncomfortably in their graves, or seizing on Dr. Eben Alexander’s experience in “Proof of Heaven” (where they surely are) their butterfly wings must be encountering rough sledding.
Well, Ms. Pelosi. You have passed it and we have found out what is in it, and it is not good for our great nation. I am very afraid that our legislators will try to “keep that of it which is good” and we will end up with an even more confusing situation. Would that Justice Roberts hadn’t conjured up the tax justification, and that it would have been judged unconstitutional. Failing that, we must repeal it in its’ entirety, replacing it with a series of limited, objective laws to solve what problems do exist in the best health system in the world. Tax-advantaged health care savings accounts offer the great advantage to eliminating the middle man and putting medicine on a business-like basis.
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3) Henninger: The Growth Revolutions Erupt
Ukrainians want what we've got: The benefits of real economic growth.
All future histories of the Obama presidency will analyze the phrase "leading from behind"—the idea that the U.S. superpower should behave as no more than a co-equal partner in managing the affairs of the world. Chapters will be devoted to laying this revisionist template over Libya, Syria and Iran. There is one area, though, in which the returns are already in on this new notion of American leadership: For five years, the U.S. has been leading the world economy from behind. It's not pretty.
Across the postwar period, the U.S. has been the "engine" that pulls the world economy. That engine has sputtered the past five years, with annual U.S. growth rotating around 2% rather than the historic average above 3%. Economies elsewhere are faltering or choking. Even China is decelerating. The European Union this week predicted weak growth through 2015.
After the great recession ended in early 2009, the normal post-recession growth spike in the U.S. never happened, meaning the world's people missed out on a lot of productive economic activity. And don't hold your breath. According to the Congressional Budget Office's outlook report this Feb. 4, "The growth of potential GDP over the next 10 years is much slower than the average since 1950." Not slower. Much slower.
Hang around the Washington political and pundit class these days, and you get the impression this doesn't matter much. We'll muddle through low growth till the sun comes out again. Raise the minimum wage, create more tax credits or spend $300 billion pouring federal concrete, and the clouds will part.
You think so? Let's try to describe as provocatively as possible the future that a slower U.S. economy will produce, and we don't mean the coming Medicare-cost bomb. If the American economic engine slows permanently to about 2%, you're going to see more fires around the world like Ukraine and Venezuela. At the margin, the world's weakest, most misgoverned countries will pop, and violently.
No one in our politics should be so naïve as to think that in a dangerously low-growth world, the U.S. won't have to get "involved." Weakening economies breed anger and political volatility, as in the 1930s, and if the flames get high enough, there will be U.S. boots on the ground somewhere.
The Arab Spring erupted just three years ago. As in Ukraine or Venezuela, the scenes from Middle Eastern capitals were the same: thousands of young demonstrators (a million in Cairo's Tahrir Square), bonfires and bloodshed. Yes, it's about political freedom and corruption, but left unseen because it can't be photographed in these upheavals is the reality of economic hopelessness.
People attend a rally in Independence Square in Kiev on Wednesday. Reuters
Mainly that means massive joblessness, notably among young people. It's 39% in Egypt and 38% for university graduates in Tunisia. We are witnessing growth revolutions. Why are Ukrainians fighting and dying to join the low-growth European Union? Because the EU has a system that makes real economic growth theoretically possible, unlike erratic Russia. Aligned with the EU, a free Poland has grown, even if Italy and France have frittered away what they had. France reported record unemployment this week.
The U.S. and Western Europe have lived through these recent years with the illusion that economic mediocrity can't be so bad because they've had no Orange Revolutions on their lovely streets. In fact, these vain and decelerating advanced economies are living off the accumulated inheritance of a century and a half of good growth.
Angus Maddison, the late and eminent economist for the OECD, produced a famous chart in 1995, depicted nearby. For the longest time—basically from after the Garden of Eden until the 19th century—economic benefit for the average person in the West or Japan was flat as toast. The Mona Lisa aside, there was a reason someone back then said life was nasty, brutish and short. Then suddenly, new wealth spread broadly.
Maddison describes 1820 till 1950 as the "capitalist epoch." He means that admiringly. The tools of capitalism unlocked the knowledge created until then. What came to be called "economic growth" gave more people jobs that lifted them and their families from the muck of joblessness and poverty. Maddison also noted that much of the world did not participate in the capitalist epoch. No wonder they revolt now.
This history is worth restating because the importance of strong economic growth, and the unavoidable necessity of a U.S. that leads that growth, may be disappearing down the memory hole of public policy, on the left and even among some on the right. Both share the grim view that the U.S. economy is flatlining, and the grim fight is over how to divide what's left.
There is no alternative to strong economic growth. None. They know this in Beijing, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Warsaw, Bratislava, Taipei, even Hanoi. The missing piece is a global growth agenda led by a U.S. president and Treasury secretary who aren't fundamentally at odds with capitalism. The revival of tax reform announced this week (and on these pages) by House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp is a start.
In a puckish moment, Angus Maddison did say that income inequality was rather minimal in the 11th century. Now those were the days.
3a)Tax Reform for Growth
Dave Camp's plan would yield $700 billion in extra 'dynamic' revenue.
The smarter Republicans are trying to reclaim the mantle of economic opportunity, and on Wednesday Dave Camp climbed into this phone booth by proposing a detailed tax reform. The Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee wants to lower tax rates and create a fairer, more efficient code, and his plan ought to shift the debate over taxes to growth from redistribution.
The American tax system has changed for the worse since the last reform in 1986, and Mr. Camp has spent three years learning about the dispiriting specifics, including more than 30 hearings. The Michigan Republican is a serious legislator who cares about policy, and his effort shows. We disagree with many details in his 979-page bill, but overall his direction is right. Even if his bill doesn't pass this year, its legwork will inform any future reform.
***
The heart of the Camp plan would collapse today's seven income tax brackets into three, with about 99% of taxpayers paying 10% or 25%. The top statutory marginal rate would fall to 35% from 39.6% for individuals earning wage income over $400,000 ($450,000 for joint filers).
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.) Associated Press
Mr. Camp would also simplify the tax code whose 70,000 pages defy human comprehension and cost $168 billion annually in compliance spending. The plan would sweep out this warren of deductions, credits and interest group carve-outs and raise the standard deduction to $11,000 for individuals and $22,000 for couples. About 95% of taxpayers would no longer itemize, according to estimates from the Joint Tax Committee, or JTC.
Mostly this modernization involves consolidating redundant provisions like the 15 tax breaks for higher education or repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax. For the record, Mr. Camp preserves the mortgage interest deduction for all current loans and, for new mortgages, lowers the cap to $500,000 from $1 million of mortgage debt. For the 5% of filers who would itemize, the plan retains the charitable deduction for contributions greater than 2% of income.
The corporate tax rate would fall to 25% from 35%, in a similar trade of a lower rate and simplicity for fewer loopholes. U.S. companies are now subject to the highest combined federal-state tax rate in the developed world, which has depressed hiring and wages and driven capital and talent offshore. Mr. Camp's plan would make U.S. business more competitive by cutting the rate closer to the world average.
The larger goal is to impose fewer burdens on income and investment to lift the U.S. economy out of the malaise of President Obama's 2% expansion. For all Mr. Obama's focus on the "middle class," no modern Presidency has been worse for average Americans. Median household income is still 4.4% lower than when the recession ended in 2009, and the predictable result of trying to reduce inequality instead of increasing growth has been more inequality and less growth.
Congress's tax scorers predict the Camp reform would create $3.4 trillion more in economic growth and 1.8 million new jobs. But the bigger intellectual and political advance is that the Joint Tax Committee has scored the Camp proposal in a way that includes the tax revenue payoff from this faster growth.
Normally the JTC practices the occult science called static scoring, which assumes that GDP and investment and work behavior barely change when the tax system does. This model tends to show too much "lost" revenue and too little growth, and thus produces an anti-tax-cut bias. "Dynamic scoring" is another way of saying accurate scoring that recognizes the growth dividend of reforming the code.
Ample evidence shows that cutting rates on marginal income and capital will have significant feedback effects that yield more revenue, including studies by Harvard economists Martin Feldstein, Greg Mankiw and Matthew Weinzierl and others. These columns have pushed this stone up the mountain for decades, and maybe this time it won't roll back.
Statically speaking, the Camp plan is revenue- and distributional-neutral, but dynamically, Joint Tax estimates it will throw off $700 billion in higher receipts over a decade. If Mr. Obama is shrewder than usual, he'll pocket these dollars, call the Camp plan a tax increase on the rich to placate the left and bask in the political glow of more prosperity.
Mr. Camp could get even more bang for his reform buck if he didn't work off the JTC "current law" baseline that pretends that nominally temporary and currently expired tax breaks won't be renewed. But the reality is that Congress is going to extend items like the R&D credit, born in 1981, so reformers should assume they are permanent. That would allow another $1 trillion over 10 years to push rates down further.
In particular, Mr. Camp's top 35% individual rate is still too high, especially because it is structured as a "surcharge" on some but not all earners above $450,000 that will lead to the distortions that reform is supposed to stop. So he proposes that all "production" income should qualify for the 25% top rate, which would capture S corps or "pass-through" businesses. But wait until Congress stuffs its favorite campaign contributors into "production" while salary earners pay higher rates. Mr. Camp is attempting to deflect Mr. Obama's class war claims, but this provision is too clever by half.
Then again, Mr. Camp deserves plaudits for avoiding the trap laid by some conservatives like Utah Senator Mike Lee who want to mimic liberals in using tax reform to redistribute income—albeit to GOP constituencies by greatly increasing the $1,000 per child tax credit. Mr. Camp does raise the per child tax credit to $1,500 to make the tax cut distributionally neutral, but such credits are expensive and do nothing for growth.
***
Most weaknesses in Mr. Camp's plan are due to his trying to offer something that might attract a Democratic President and Senate. Many Republicans are also skeptical, believing they can coast to gains in November by attacking ObamaCare—full stop. They want to avoid voting on Mr. Camp's plan in the House.
Republicans should run against the health law, but they are already going to get those voters. They also need a positive agenda, especially for lifting growth and incomes. The GOP has made clear it's for cutting deficits. Now it needs to restore its reputation as the growth party, and Mr. Camp's proposal should start the debate.
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