Although as an office it is not much of a credential, I was the President of the Jerry Brown for President campaign at my college in 1992. There are probably many future Kossacks in that campaign. Brown's 1992 platform included replacing the income tax with a national flat tax. I bring this up because I am one of the few Democrats with experience defending the flat tax, and with the rise of Huckabee I thought I would weigh in.
Going into a campaign season with extremely good prospects, we should talke about the inability of congressional democrats and the president to coalesce around a policy mandate in the past under both Clinton and Carter, with most of the responsibility falling on congressional egomaniacs who thought that being a great legislator is to be the swing obstructionist against your own new president.
The issue of the flat tax took relevance in my mind after Atrios named Democrat Dan Boren 'Wanker of the Day' following a post by Digby yesterday discussing his support of the Huckabee tax. In bringing the old Jerry Brown argument for the flat tax into the discussion I'm not defending Dan Boren whom Digby is clear in showing has damaged Democratic success with shallow adherence to Broder, Lieberman style 'bipartisanship' in the past.
Thinking this over, though, it occurs to me that if the democratic party developed and proposed a grand tax and social policy compromise at this point, while the flat tax is in play in Presidential politics, and ran on it ourselves, Edwards or Obama, in the 2008 election, we could give the GOP their flat tax, doing away with the extremely burdensome manner of collecting tax through verified personal income, while preserving progressivity in the tax code and securing new fundamental rights for the social well-being of Americans.
While the heartland families and small business owners, many traditionally GOP voters, would rejoice at abolishing the IRS, including this small business owner, a dyed in the wool Democrat. On top of that we could create a mandate to enact the old Brown platform because there would be two large conditions for Democrats to consent to abolishing the income tax. The way I think it through, the Democratic conditions should be significant increases in the capital gains and inheritance taxes, so that the national sales tax doesn't need to be near the onerous 30% of the Huckabee tax. Furthermore, as a condition for abolishing the income tax we would demand a Family Bill of Rights for health care, housing and food.
This would be a true positive compromise because it would cause both parties to give cherished ground on fundamental reform, and the vast majority of Americans would easily see the positive improvement for society with that agenda and they would support it. Although the super wealthy would not like this arrangement probably, because the scale of the increase in capital gains and inheritance tax would need to be significant to keep a national sales tax far from the onerous 30% level of the Huckabee/Linder/Bortz tax.
If you have never tried to start a small business, I am on my second, and let me tell you, even if you are a one person show, an installer of statuary, or a plumber, you must Produce, do your Marketing and Sales, and do your Administration. I believe that for small business, organizing and carrying out the processes of income and expense accounting for tax purposes for Schedule C accounting is the single biggest roadblock for the first three years of a business. You need to be producing and selling but instead you are panicking about the shoe-box full of receipts for last years taxes. This causes the failure of millions of businesses. If you have struggled through the challenge, you know instinctively the huge political benefit for the party that abolishes the income tax freeing the world's sole proprietorships and free-lancers everywhere from income accounting. Although a larger business always will have the need for sophisticated accounting, you shouldn't have to understand the rules for depreciating your equipment or for dividing home and office expenses just to participate in the marketplace as a business.
I think that we will be able to preserve progressivity without the income tax, because many in the GOP base are not naturally allies with billionaires. I estimate that at least half of the GOP base would favor even making the tax system more progressive than it is now, but progressive towards dynastic wealth not work. I think a flat tax could be key to a bipartisan compromise to make the tax system more fair, as well as ensure the right to health care, housing, and food. This was the key to Brown's 1992 platform, the inherent grand bargain of it. I guarantee if you put the flat tax in front of the libertarian small business owning independent or republican, they would even agree to universal health care and to instituting a fundamental right to food and shelter to get it.
Obama, Edwards, or Clinton could take the flat tax from Huckabee, especially if we faced him, and run as a strong partisan Democrat on a platform of bipartisan compromise, and it would be, unlike Rove, not stealing the other's proposal, and changing it to do less, like the prescription drug benefit, but taking the air out of your opponent's platform by giving them what they are asking for on conditions appealing to the majority of the people, but unacceptable to a significant portion of your opponent's base, such as universal health care. You are not negotiating only with yourself if your conditions include fundamental reform for the other side as a precondition for negotiating. For a Presidential election, from a political standpoint, a platform that includes a key goals of many of the other side, could give our party a mandate to carry the reform out on our own terms, if the election is a presidential and congressional landslide, as looks to be forming. Who is the constituency of the income tax? The poor? Would it be so if there was a fundamental right to health care, shelter, food, (college education)?