NYT article on Debt Commission makes it sound like pure bullshit

[BurtWorm]

It offers boilerplate post-Reagan "remedies," including "permanent" tax cuts for all to increase revenue. They suggest sneaking in higher payroll taxes on upper incomes to offset SS deficits and restructuring the tax code to eliminate or reduce certain breaks currently on the books, but also cuts in military and social spending--the usual crap. What a waste of tax payer money this panel was!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11fiscal.html?hp=&pagewanted=print


Panel Weighs Deep Cuts in Tax Breaks and Spending
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — A draft proposal to be released Wednesday by the chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the federal debt calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending starting in 2012, and an overhaul of the tax code to raise revenue. Those changes and others would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says.

The plan would reduce Social Security benefits to most future retirees — low-income people would get a higher benefit — and it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes to ensure Social Security’s solvency for at least the next 75 years.

But the plan would not count any savings from Social Security toward meeting the overall deficit-reduction goal set by Mr. Obama, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to balance the nation’s books.

The proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under the plan, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent on the lowest income bracket (now 10 percent) and to 23 percent on the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would also be reduced, to as low as 26 percent.

Even after reducing the rates, the overhaul of the tax code would still yield additional revenue to reduce annual deficits — a projected $80 billion in 2015.

[Newsjock]

1. It taxes everybody's employer-provided health benefits!

From the article:

But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.

[Lasher]

2. Cut taxes to increase revenues, yay!

It worked so well during the GWB years, didn't it?

:mad:

[aquart]

3. Were these guys from Chicago? Goldman Sachs?

[gratuitous]

4. Terrific, means testing of social security

That practically guarantees that social security will come to be viewed as a low income "entitlement" program, which will soon (within 10 years) have no advocates in Congress or the administration, and be ripe for the chopping block in the name of reducing government spending.

But let's not be too hasty in judging the Catfood Commission. After all, they haven't submitted their final report, and a good Democratic president wouldn't dare mess with social security. And surely they wouldn't rush such a profound adjustment through Congress in a lame duck session. Or so I'm told.

[displacedvermoter]

5. Do we have such a situation as you refer to that will

prevent such a travesty? I am told we do, but...

[stopbush]

6. You know, I sort of disagree.

They lower overall tax rates but get rid of deductions like that for mortgage interest. Now, I certainly liked that deduction when I owned a home, but I'm less of a fan now that I'm renting and in effect paying my landlord's mortgage on his property while he takes a deduction for the interest on his loan.

I also definitely agree with taxing higher levels of income for SS. Why cut it off at $106,000? I say tax people all the way p to their first million or so.

As far as taxing employer-based health insurance, I see that as a big positive as it will propel the country toward single payer.

[Xithras]

7. Eliminating the mortgage interest deduction will lead to another round of foreclosures.

There are still a huge number of 10 year I/O loans mortgages out there that have never defaulted, but where the deductibility of the interest (essentially 100% of the mortgage payment) is the only thing keeping the homeowners in the homes.

Eliminating the deduction will drive most of them into foreclosure.