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From a Right Wing News source.
The New Republic ( a ne0-Liberal news source) gives the general an "A" for his tax-cut plan. Their ratings haven't made me want to puke as much as many of their analysis goes.
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How refreshing, then, it was to hear about General Wesley Clark's tax-reform plan yesterday. By reform, Clark doesn't simply mean fiddling with the tax rates like most other candidates. He means changing the way Americans actually deal with the IRS. (Well, some of them, anyway.)
The centerpiece of his plan is a proposal to consolidate a bunch of existing tax credits for children, make them bigger so that some families owe no taxes at all, and then--this is the really interesting part--completely exempt those families from filing tax returns at all. To qualify for the new zero-tax liability, all a family must do is fill out a three-line form--marital status, number of children, and total income--showing they meet the sliding scale of eligibility. (The cutoff for a two-parent family with two children would be $50,000 in family income; for that family, says the Clark campaign, the new tax break would be worth about $1,500.)
Keep in mind, just three or four million families will satisfy these guidelines. The rest, alas, will still have to file returns. But according to Clark's campaign, as long as they make less than $100,000, their tax bills will actually go down--to even less than they were after the Bush tax cuts.
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Of all the tax plans out there right now, this would certainly seem to be the most cleverly conceived. Other candidates have offered tax breaks for the poor and middle class, but only Clark lets people escape the painful process of tax-filing in the first place--something voters are bound to like, even if only a relatively small number of them can actually take advantage of it. And while this plan would raise taxes on a handful of wealthy Americans--by a whopping 10 points--Clark is cannily taking on that issue directly, daring Karl Rove to fight him on it:
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There's a sound policy rationale for this approach, given society's interest in subsidizing the expenses associated with child-rearing. On the other hand, it means fewer people benefit than in, say, Joe Lieberman's tax plan, which raises taxes on the very wealthy to finance benefits for everybody else--as in 98 percent of all taxpayers. Limiting the tax cut as Clark does could have some political implications since in 2000 Bush argued against Gore's own tax plan by mocking the way Democrats "pick and choose" who gets tax relief.
One might also ask whether, after the Bush tax cuts, anybody really needs more tax cuts. Certainly the primary beneficiaries of Clark's cut--the poor and middle class--are more deserving of tax breaks than the wealthy. And given the constant struggle to pay for things like childcare, it's not like the money will be wasted. On the other hand, once you take back the gifts to the Jaguar crowd, what's the best way to use that money? Financing education? Expanding health insurance? Paying down debt to fortify Social Security? To varying degrees, that's what the other candidates have done. And there's a sound rationale for almost any approach.
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Of course, when you step back and think about it, this whole debate has a certain pie-in-the-sky quality to it. If a Democrat wins the White House, he'll be dealing with a Republican Congress not exactly eager to undo the Bush tax cuts. The real usefulness of proposals like these, then, is as a test of priorities. And Clark has certainly passed this one.
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