Dean supporters: do you think he'll soften a bit on the tax cut issue?

[DealsGapRider]

Kerry is charging that the entire Bush tax cut shouldn't be repealed...that those benefitting the middle and lower classes should be retained. Dean is saying that we should repeal them fully. Do you guys think Dean will moderate his position on the tax cuts later in the campaign? I do.

Full disclosure: I'm for Dean over Kerry.

[musiclawyer]

1. Kerry should moderate his position

Read today's Slate article. It's brilliant. The whole damn tax cut should be repealed, and maybe, maybe we can balance the budget in five years.........Otherwise, you, me and our kids are in deep shit--real money that we'll have to pay back.

[AP]

2. Krugman says the middle class tax breaks wont solve the problems

and that there are probably good reasons to keep them since the tax code needs more progressivity (www.liberaloasis.com). That's Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist who said over at Buzzflash.com that he spent hours and hours trying to understand the budget.

[Larkspur]

4. Read the whole quote from Krugman in Liberal Oasis

Put it this way. If you do the arithmetic, take the estimates of where we are on budget, we’re actually very deep in the hole.

The best estimates say we got a fundamental shortfall of about 4.5 or 4.6 percent of GDP. The Bush tax cuts are actually about 2.7 percent of GDP.

So the truth is, even if we rolled them all back, we would still have a hole in the budget.

If you wanted to…keep the tax cuts for the middle-class, there’s something to be said for . Our tax system has gotten a lot less progressive over the past 20 years.

But that means that you’re going to have to come up either with some kind of program cuts or some kind of additional revenue elsewhere.

Even with all the Bush tax cuts rolled back, we still have a long-run budget problem, though it’s not nearly as severe as the one we’re right now facing.

So if somebody says, “I just want to repeal some parts of it,” I think it’s fair to ask, “Well OK, what else are you going to do?”

What Krugman is saying is that even with repealing all of the tax cuts, we will still be in a big deficit, so repealing them all is NOT ENOUGH. If repealing them all is not enough to solve the deficit, then how is keeping some of them going to alleviate the deficit? Earlier in the interview, Krugman credited Clinton's balanced budget, not surplus, with the Clinton economic boon. The surplus was based largely on the stock market bubbles, but the balanced budget is what energized our economy as well as overexcited the stock market brokers.

Program cuts, which could hurt everyone, and/or increase revenues -- increasing taxes or looking for more people to input money into government coffers -- will have to be considered along with repealing the Bush tax cuts. The damage Bush & Co. have wrought is long lasting.

[AP]

9. What Krugman is saying is this tax cut thing shouldn't be viewed

as the only issue which will solve the problem. Of course the canidates will have other solutions. But progressivity is good.

At the least Dean should acknowldge that he's for progressivity -- that the baseline should be lower taxes on the middle class relative to the top quintile, and that if that distribution of the burden doesn't solve the problem, then he would raise taxes in a way to maintain the progressivity (ie, biggest increases in marginal rates in the higher quintile and lower increases in the lower quintiles). Dean needs to draw a line between being business friendly in the sense that he's going to protect their easy profits and their domination of the political and economic systems through things like regressive taxation, or is he business friendly in the sense that he's going progressive the tax code, stimulate the middle class like a good Keynsian, and grow the whole economy, which will allow any company to make more money so long as they're willing to compete in a bigger, more competitive economy.

Maybe I'm a dreamer and maybe Dean's right. Maybe anybody who did the former would find themselves shot are the victim of character assassination by the media. However, Democrats are not going to come out and vote for a candidate who doesn't address this central truth of how America works. Had Gore done this, he would have won like Clinton won twice.

[DealsGapRider]

10. You make very good points.

But I am less interested in the budgetary effects of the Dean position than I am in the political value of a more "centrist" position. I worry that Dean is going to become the 180 candidate -- anything the Bushies do, he's 180 degrees opposed. Let's fact it, if 98% of what Bush does is wrong, that means that 2% of what he does is right. It's foolish to oppose that 2%.

Also, fully repealing the tax cuts may be the most responsible thing to do, but if this position allows Kerry to defeat Dean, it's not worth it. See what I mean?

[bearfartinthewoods]

6. great selling point

a vote for Dean will cost you $2000.00 dollars in additional taxes.

sheesh...the ads write themselves.

[dsc]

11. and will save you $2700 on your mortgage

which puts you ahead by $700. That is assuming a 200k mortgage, 1.5% savings of current rate hike (in the six weeks from late June to the middle of July), and avoidence of another 1.5% increase if the economy continues to grow under deficit conditions.

[bearfartinthewoods]

13. assuming a 200K mortgage?

yikes...that's quite an assumption around here.

besides...everyone i know locked in low-fixed rates months ago.

[maxomai_vs_rove]

3. half and half

I think he *might* moderate his position a bit regarding restoring middle-class tax cuts, but that the second half of the equasion -- radically simplifying the tax code, closing a number of loopholes -- makes a great deal of sense, and he should fight for that tooth and nail.

[dsc]

5. You are much more likely to see Kerry moderate his

We can not solve the budget mess with smoke and mirrors. If Kerry wins on keeping middle class tax cuts it will be Clinton redux. He will announce that he found a bigger mess than he thought and that the cuts have to go.

[cjbuchanan]

7. Dean will come up with his own tax plan

I think Dean will still say that we need to get rid of all Bush's tax cuts, but come up with a new type of tax cuts that will benefit the middle and lower economic classes.

People will attack him for changing his stand on the issue, but he will maintain that this is a Dean tax cut for the working families of America.

Just my thoughts.

[CMT]

12. I think you are right on target

I think Dean will call for the repeal of the entire Bush program and propose his own economic and tax program which might include some targeted tax cuts.

[ieoeja]

8. That is why W is the wealthy's worst nightmare.

I think he will moderate it. Did you see Clinton come in and raise taxes on the poor and middle class? No. He raised taxes on the top 1.2%.

Just like Reagan, W had to lower taxes across the board to sell his tax cuts for the wealthy. And just like Clinton, the next Democrat in office will keep the lower income tax cuts in place and shift yet more of the total tax burden to the highest income earners as the rightwing keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Keep this cycle up and the idiots on the right will have Bill Gates end up as the only person in the United States having to pay income taxes! If we can survive the next Republican president, that is.