If they had invited me, I would have given them a different take, rather than more of the usual solutions by the usual suspects. As it is, I am limited to commenting on the coverage of others on The Fiscal Times and TaxVox.
If having the country not go bankrupt appeals to you, read below the fold.
Six Think Tanks Tackle the Budget Deficit by Howard Gleckman and
Fiscal Summit Aims at Deep Gaps in Deficit Plans by Merrill Goozner
My comments:
I suspect that the plans added up because TPC was scoring them.
It is too bad that no one advocated base broadening Medicare revenues AND raising tax rates. This comes from inviting mostly established players. New answers will not come from current actors. After yesterdays NY-26 result, the current Republican ideas are essentially dead. If anyone mentions premium support in the future (including TPC), they will lose their place at the table – and the GOP may quickly go the way of the Whigs. If Chairman Ryan is even on the Budget Committee in the next Congress, I will be very surprised.
Consolidating all health care and non-retirement entitlement spending (as well as other human services) into a single tax on employers would provide an incentive to employers to find lower cost/higher quality alternatives.
It is also disappointing that the progressive movement is slow to pick up the fact that the only way to make higher taxes more palatable to the wealthy is to threaten them with more worker – particularly union – control of industry through repeal of restrictions on concentrated ownership in the Taft Hartley Act and by proposing Personal Retirement Accounts in Social Security which old employer voting stock rather than index fund. One whiff of such a proposal and capitalists will fall all over themselves to go back to the old bargain, which Reagan voided.
Cutting tax benefits is all the rage, however in order to reverse the aging crisis, the answer is not better finance but more children. Shifting funds from housing subsidies to the rich to income support to families – to the tune of $500 per month per child – would make this happen without the housing industry taking a hit.
The tax benefit cut that should be considered is treating disbursements from selling inherited assets, capital gains and dividends as normal income.
Finally, to be realistic, use the Clinton era rates as the baseline for tax reform. This keeps all players honest, since without compromise, these rates become law automatically. Of course, if compromise is simply avoided, there is no need for any deal.
The real reason for all this activity is that the current players believe going back to the Clinton era is politically toxic. They are most likely wrong about that – however the people who FUND all of these organizations, including TPC, would rather not see these rates again. I have no qualms about stating this, since no one funds me.