Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
From the Daily Caller (hat tip: Ace of Spades):
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan says he “loves” presidential candidate Herman Cain’s signature “9-9-9″ tax plan.
Ryan told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview that Cain’s plan is a good starting point for debate, and shows the GOP presidential campaign season has entered into a more advanced stage where ideas — not just personalities — have come to the forefront.
“We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible,” Ryan said. “I’m more of a flat-tax kind of a guy.”
The budget chairman went on to say that ideas like Cain’s plan could help shape the debate over tax reform moving into 2013.
“It’s great to see such bold ideas,” Ryan told TheDC.
Well, well.
Now, Ryan isn't exactly endorsing 9-9-9 outright. But he says that 9-9-9 has an unappreciated merit: it is sparking actual policy debate. (By the way, the post at the Ace of Spades link quotes Art Laffer - he of the eponymous curve - coming way closer to endorsing 9-9-9 outright.)
I am not sure whether this will assuage the people claiming Cain is just pushing a catchy slogan that has no intellectual firepower behind it. But I think it should.
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Oct '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Au contraire... Ann Althouse, THE authority on all things GOP is opposed to 999.
Who ya' gonna' trust??
Edited on Oct 13, 2011 at 2:03pmJul '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Thanks for posting this ... Ryan's voice is nearly universally respected in these here parts, so this gives Cain some "egghead cred", so to speak.
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
raycon: Au contraire... Ann Althouse, THE authority on all things GOP is opposed to 999.
Who ya' gonna' trust?? · Oct 13 at 2:02pm
Edited on Oct 13 at 02:03 pm
Exactly. Althouse says it, so it must be true -- let's not wait to hear from other people, people whose opinion might be a bit weightier on all counts.
Doesn't that leave you with a frosty feeling?
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
I'd go even further: it indicates that if Ryan himself were running, as so many here so fervently wish, he might well put forward a tax reform plan that looks a lot like Cain's 9-9-9. (And after all, isn't Ryan's appeal based on his willingness to put forward an entitlement plan that's similarly bold, and "impossible to pass," and "partisan"?)
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Stuart Creque
raycon: Au contraire... Ann Althouse, THE authority on all things GOP is opposed to 999.
Who ya' gonna' trust?? · Oct 13 at 2:02pm
Edited on Oct 13 at 02:03 pm
Exactly. Althouse says it, so it must be true -- let's not wait to hear from other people, people whose opinion might be a bit weightier on all counts.
Doesn't that leave you with a frosty feeling? · Oct 13 at 2:10pm
What? Althouse isn't your primary authority for economic policies? You must be one of them conservatives.
May '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Note how careful Ryan is not to endorse the sales tax. Ed Morrissey explains why.
Aug '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Cain's got everyone talking about 9-9-9, both positively and negatively, and this means nobody's talking about Mitt. Poor guy. ("The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.")
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
I think Romney's okay with that for now. He's probably counting on Cain's train to crash, as Pery's seems to have, leaving him the last man standing.
Jan '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Well, you can't seem to stop talking abou him, evidently, Drew. ;)
I don't oppose 999 on the merits, necessarily. I oppose it on the utter unfeasability of it right now, as well as the high likelihood of unintended consequences and it morphing into something else which will only lead to the government taking more of our money.
I agree with Ryan that it's nice to be having actual policy debates. I just think this plan is a very shaky foundation to base a presidential bid on, both politically and as a prescription for our problems. A revenue neutral tax reform ( I don't believe it's revenue neutral BTW, but I'll concede it for the sake of argument) doesn't address any of the immediate debt problems nor does it fix the other structural and non-debt related issues holding back the economy. In short, 999 sounds like little more than a gimmick. At best it's a very small part of what needs to be a much bigger comprehensive plan.
Edited on Oct 13, 2011 at 3:16pmDec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I think Romney's okay with that for now. He's probably counting on Cain's train to crash, as Pery's seems to have, leaving him the last man standing. · Oct 13 at 3:06pm
If Cain crashes, Mitt won't be the last man standing. He's already the last moderate standing (Huntsman never having taken off, Pawlenty having crashed and Christie having declined to run), but there's Newt Gingrich, who hasn't been eliminated and would (after Cain) be the last conservative non-Romney standing, and there's Ron Paul, who's the last of his species.
A Cain meltdown (God forbid) will leave the GOP voters with a choice between Romney, Gingrich and Paul. I am pretty sure Paul isn't going to pick up many voters who aren't already firmly in his camp; I am not sure Romney automatically beats Gingrich among all other GOP voters.
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Art Laffer approves of Cain's "gimmick":
"Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would be a vast improvement over the current tax system and a boon to the U.S. economy," Laffer told HUMAN EVENTS in a statement. "The goal of supply-side tax reform is always a broadening of the tax base and lowering of marginal tax rates."
Added Laffer: "Mr. Cain’s plan is simple, transparent, neutral with respect to capital and labor, and savings and consumption, and also greatly decreases the hidden costs of tax compliance. There is no doubt that economic growth would surge upon implementation of 9-9-9."
Laffer also said that "such a system provides the least avenues to avoid paying taxes, yet also maintains the strongest incentives for work effort, production, and investment."
Apr '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
While there is a bit of gimmickry with the choice of the 9% rates, the concept is what matters for right now. Knowing how congress works, it's highly doubtful it would pass in the manner Cain envisions it anyway
Lastly, let me channel my inner-liberal and say "let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good." This is clearly a step in the right direction.
Jan '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Laffer's points are all theoretical. On paper it seems dandy. I'm not judging how it looks on paper in a perfect world. I'm judging it in the real world and looking at our governments history of taking every revenue program it's ever had and bastardized it into something orders of magnitude bigger than it was ever intended to be.
Whats more, even if somehow we could have confidence we could maintain the design integrity of 999, the simple fact is you could never find 60 votes in the senate to pass the bill. All sorts of ideas look great in theory. If they're politically not viable, they are worthless. And if the idea can be used by your opponent to defeat you, the idea is worse than worthless, it's political suicide. Laffer can praise it from an economic view all he wants. That doesn't mean it's a political winner.
Edited on Oct 13, 2011 at 3:30pmAug '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
There are several features of Cain's plan that haven't received much attention:
The elimination of the mortgage-interest deduction will be a blow to housing prices, but government never should have been in the business of subsidizing housing in the first place, and the market will eventually adjust to the new reality.
Mar '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
It's encouraging that both Mr Cain and Mr Ryan regard 999 as a starting point for discussions -- I suspect Mr Ryan wants to drop the last 9 and change the first two numbers. It would be really great if Mr Ryan endorsed Mr Cain and Dr Laffer is called in to advise them both.
Sometimes I feel a little more optimistic :-)
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Politically viable, as in raising current spending by hundreds of billions as part of a "deficit reduction" that promises offsetting cuts... someday... to be enacted by a future Congress that will be just as concerned with its short-term political needs as this one?
Let's see whether the GOP can reach a 60-vote majority in the next Congress, and if not, let's see how close to actually repairing our broken fiscal system we can get, rather than conceding without any fight and doing our opponents' job of defeating our ideas for them.
Mar '11
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
Others will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Dr Laffer was the theorist behind the post-Carter boom, via Jack Kemp?
Dec '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
The Laffer and Ryan nods are important. For myself, I don't mind the 9 that is the Sales Tax, as it replaces and is smaller than the embedded tax we already pay at the cash register, since the price of every item we purchase already includes the embedded federal income and corporate taxes.
My only problem with the proposal, as written, is that it double taxes wages and salaries as pointed out by Dan Mitchell and linked to, over on the Member Feed.
As businesses do not get to deduct wages and salaries under the plan, before calculating their 9% Business Tax, they pay the full 9% on those labor costs. That same item is taxed at 9% at the personal Income Tax level. That's a double taxation on a single item that needs to be addressed as this proposed plan is ironed out. If it ever gets to the point of being ironed out.
Aug '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
This just feels like the IRS and the ponderous, indeed leviathanesque, tax code are inevitable and eternal. If that can be unwound, I don't care what the numbers are. Just simplify, please.
And then there are the hundreds of thousands of IRS employees, trust attorneys, accountants, and others who will fight for the byzantine job security it offers.
Simplify 9-9-9, 10-10-10, whatever. Just simplify. And gut the agencies that require such largess, except the ones that offer our citizenry protection from enemies, crooks, and then please go home. No more housing for representatives, no more staffs over ten people. Which means no more lobbyists....
Oct '10
Re: Sometimes Bold Ideas Aren't So Stupid and Simplistic: Ryan on Cain's 9-9-9
flownover: This just feels like the IRS and the ponderous, indeed leviathanesque, tax code are inevitable and eternal. If that can be unwound, I don't care what the numbers are. Just simplify, please.
And then there are the hundreds of thousands of IRS employees, trust attorneys, accountants, and others who will fight for the byzantine job security it offers.
Simplify 9-9-9, 10-10-10, whatever. Just simplify. And gut the agencies that require such largess, except the ones that offer our citizenry protection from enemies, crooks, and then please go home. No more housing for representatives, no more staffs over ten people. Which means no more lobbyists.... · Oct 13 at 3:45pm
Don't stop there, you're on a roll.