Senator Ben Nelson had an op-ed piece posted this morning at The Politico entitled Close the tax loopholes. Personally, I was expecting it to be all about closing the loopholes on oil, coal, and other typical Democrat gripes. Instead, we do not get to discussing loopholes till the 3rd to last paragraph
And by tax reform, I mean closing loopholes, special interest tax breaks and corporate subsidies. It’s just plain wrong to be protecting tax breaks for oil companies and to be rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas.
There’s the evil oil companies meme. But, I say, he’s kinda right: let’s do away with all loopholes, subsidies, and tax breaks. All of them. Every single one. Even the home mortgage deduction. Then we can lower the tax rates for ever income bracket, including corporations. This way, everyone will pay their “fair share”. No longer will multi-millionaires be able to pay just 6% of their earned income. And the 47% who pay no federal income tax could do their part. Stop using the federal tax code to influence behavior, and use it to simply provide operating revenue for the federal government, the way it was meant to be.
Moving on from what Ben barely mentions despite being his headline, he calls for New Era Of Civility 2.0, including
Democrats need to see tea partiers as something other than debt-limit hostage-taking Republicans. And Republicans need to see President Barack Obama and Democrats as something other than big-spending socialists.
Well, hostage takers is the least of the insults, but, yeah, Obama and the Dems are not socialist: they are Progressives, ie, nice fascists. But, they damned sure are big spenders, Ben. Let’s move on to Why Government Doesn’t Work, shall we?
To do that, we need to cut some $4 trillion to $5 trillion. We made a down payment on this with the $2 trillion dollars we cut just last week. Now we need to go further.
Got that? Because the $2 trillion is in a piece of signed legislation, it is assumed that the cut is already made, despite no money having actually been cut out in Reality Land. If it never gets cut, Congress Critters and Obama will still claim that the money was cut. Los Federales like to play monetary games that would get people in the private sector thrown in jail.
Rather than a balanced budget amendment, how about we have the Smartphone Calculator Amendment? What is that? Take a look at the calculator on your phone. Notice that the vast majority that come on mobile phones are very basic. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and an equals sign. If the government cannot use a super basic calculator to come up with the monetary figures, then the figures are too damned complicated, and should all be redone so that any US citizen can look and understand what is going on immediately.
And, yeah, then Ben does go on and complain about the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and blames most of the debt and deficit on Bush not paying for 2 wars and those same tax cuts.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
Quoted and linked. Good piece of writing. I especially like the way you caught the Blame Bush nuance Nelson alluded to in his op-ed.
Thanks, Mike, for both.
You do have to love the Dems penchant for never taking the blame for anything.
To do that, we need to cut some $4 trillion to $5 trillion. We made a down payment on this with the $2 trillion dollars we cut just last week. Now we need to go further.
Got that? Because the $2 trillion is in a piece of signed legislation, it is assumed that the cut is already made
Ummmm… excuse me, but how often does a Congress “have to” come up with a budget? So, if this Congress creates a 10-year budget this year that includes cuts 5-10 years from now.. .. what will happen during next year’s Congress?
hmmmmmmmmm