A Republican exposes the GOP tax-reform fraud
By Jay Bookman
Every year since taking control of the U.S. House, Republicans have promised the American people that they would enact tax reform that would slash the top income-tax rate from 39.6 to 25 percent and do so without raising the deficit or hurting the middle class. The policy has been the centerpiece of the GOP "jobs program," such as it is, with promises that once enacted the tax-rate reduction would produce millions of new jobs. It was also embraced by 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who made it the foundation of his economic platform.
And all along, year after year, Democrats have claimed that such tax policy would be mathematically impossible, and that the plan would actually increase taxes on poor and middle-class Americans while slashing them on the richest 1 percent of Americans. Blog posts here and here and here and here documented that case thoroughly.
Now, thanks to U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a Republican from Michigan, we know who was right. It wasn't the Republicans. To the contrary, Camp's work documents thoroughly just how unrealistic and even deceptive the GOP claims had been.
In drafting his 978-page rewrite of the federal tax code, Camp tried heroically to put the vague promises of his fellow Republicans into actual policy. He took them seriously, and found them unworkable. The tax-reform package that he released last week contains a lot of good work, but in the end, after cutting a lot of tax deductions, he was able to bring the top tax rate of 39.6 percent all the way down to ... 35 percent.
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http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2014/mar/03/republican-exposes-gop-tax-reform-fraud/
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