Steve Moore on the Flat Tax
From NewsMax.com.
Are President Bush's tax cuts the precursors to a national flat tax? Club for Growth President and conservative Reaganite Stephen Moore says yes.
"That's the hidden story of what is going on under Bush," said Moore to the New Yorker. "I helped Dick Armey put together his flat-tax proposal. Nobody could get it done politically. What Bush has done in a hidden way, is move us in baby steps toward the flat tax."
Of the 2003 tax law that dramatically cut dividend and capital gains taxes - capping them at 15 percent - Heritage Foundation economist William Beach declared it "one of the greatest supply-side changes to tax law in U.S. history.
Other proposals, like Retirement Savings Accounts, have gone nowhere with Congress. While the setbacks have frustrated many conservative voters, conservative leaders are encouraged all the same.
Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist asked, "Do you think it was an accident that the first three tax cuts moved toward expensing business expenditures, toward universal IRAs, toward getting rid of the capital gains tax, toward getting rid of the double taxation of dividend income, toward getting rid of the death tax? No. It is consistent with a vision."
Comments
I agree! Bush has been brilliant on tax policy. Now, he needs to continue that work in the second term and get control of spending. Hopefully, a clear mandate and a larger Republican majority (with pro-Growth, anti-large government Republicans) in Congress, Bush can reduce government by partially privatizing social security and medicare as well as decrease the rest of the government's size, at least relative to GDP.
Posted by: Michael Newton | September 27, 2004 6:51 PM
Actually the economics and the history of it (Reagan and Kennedy tax cuts) show that revenues are going to increase with the sort of tax cuts Bush has pushed. That's what Bush senior didn't understand when he called supply side "voodoo." When you throw in the factor of major external shocks to the economy, it's worked pretty well this time around, too. The only control on spending that's really needed is to keep the rate of growth below the rate of growth of growing revenues in the face of quickly growing GDP. Bottom line: Anyone who wants guns and butter better be ready to adopt supply side tax policy.
Posted by: Tom Hanna | September 27, 2004 8:35 PM