The Role Of Norman Bates Will Be Played By Charlie Rangel
Kevin Hassett, writing for Bloomberg, invokes the Hitchcock classic Psycho to describe Charles Rangel's 'mother of all tax hikes'.
For those of you wondering what the details of taxing the rich to pay for Democratic spending proposals might look like, Rangel, a close ally of Hillary Clinton, has provided a tour of the abyss. If the “mother of all reforms,'' as he calls his tax plan, had a name, it would be Mrs. Bates. But, unlike Norman's mother in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “Psycho,'' this lady is very much alive.
In terms of revenue, Rangel's reform would be the biggest tax increase in history. Compared to a baseline where President George W. Bush's tax cuts are extended and the dreaded alternative minimum tax isn't allowed to swallow millions of taxpayers whole, the bill raises taxes by a whopping $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the office of Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.
To put that in perspective, that's about $2 trillion more than the 10-year cost of the Bush tax cuts enacted back in 2001.
But the revenue grab isn't the scariest part. That honor belongs to the increase in marginal tax rates, which is almost unfathomable in its scale. Rangel's main objective is to repeal the alternative minimum tax, which was originally designed to capture taxes from wealthy individuals but over the years has taken in more and more middle-income families.
If Rangel's monster becomes law and the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, the tax rates for "the rich" will reach confiscatory levels. And the term "rich" is used very loosely. How high would the tax rates be? Really high:
To put that tax rate in perspective, after adjusting for state and local income taxes, it would be about 13 percentage points higher than the average of U.S. trading partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And it would give the U.S. the fourth-highest combined top marginal tax rate in the OECD, behind only Denmark, Sweden and France.
Hillary Clinton has already signaled that she will support these crippling tax laws. Remember the last time a Clinton was in office the largest tax hike in American history - and the first ever to be retroactive - was enacted. It looks like Hillary wants to claim the record for herself.
By feeblemind, Monday, 29 October , 2007 @ 7:44 am
Over at the UK Daily Mail, a man walking his dog was attacked by a herd of ‘KILLER COWS’.
By Gaius, Monday, 29 October , 2007 @ 8:20 am
Thanks for the tip.
By jay k., Tuesday, 30 October , 2007 @ 8:40 am
i haven’t read rangels plan so i can’t comment. but i am curious how you expect the two trillion plus run up by our awol drunken air national guardsman president in iraq?
he has simply licked that can down the street. how do you think it’s going to get paid?
By Neil, Tuesday, 30 October , 2007 @ 8:57 am
Why did we put this $500 BILLION pre-emptive war of agression in IRAQ on the national credit card?
All the while Bush is giving out tax cuts to the INCOME of the extreamly wealthy.
US CORPORATIONS move their profits off shore and dodge their taxes while Bush waves at his corporate financiers as says “keep those campaign conrtibutions coming.”
Republicans think their party can deliver tax cut after tax cut for themselves, their children and grand children but it’s a shell game.
The compounding effect of debt that pays interest means it’ll call ost double what we paid for it, before we’ve paid for it. Wake up and smell the coffee.
By jay k., Tuesday, 30 October , 2007 @ 9:10 am
well put neil. plus there is the disengenuouisness (sp?) of a president who attempted to use the ss “crisis” as a wedge issue…but continues to spend ss moneys without accounting for it in the budget numbers. add iraq and what he has spent out of ss to the budget and let’s see how pathetic the deficit looks. fiscal responsibility…puhlease.
By ME, Tuesday, 30 October , 2007 @ 11:50 am
We aren’t paying for our infrastructure now… we will pay dearly in the future.
I hope some sanity does come back and our tax rates are brought to realistic levels, to fund what we need to fund.
I know, republicans don’t want the government to spend money, so they cut taxes and ignore necessary expenditures (like fixing bridges in minnesota). Great for their short term electoral progress… not good for the state overall.
God forbid the democrats actually do stuff to maintain our infrastructure and pay down our debt.
The rich have had it lucky. Lucky duckies…
Have you even considered the cost of our debt? not just the debt itself, but it’s effect on the value of the dollar… with 7 years of Bush, the dollar has fallen what 30%?
And yeah, the payroll tax/ss debacle is the red herring in all of this.
I pay the AMT. I get f-cked. Meanwhile, people making money off investments pay ~15% nominal tax rate. It’s absurd.
By W. ORR, Tuesday, 30 October , 2007 @ 2:32 pm
Democrats are so stupid!
It they want to pay for health care and all that other dumb, unnecessary stuff, why don’t they pay for it the same way we’re paying for the War on Terra: sell the country to China.
By Philadelphia Steve, Wednesday, 31 October , 2007 @ 10:22 am
Actually Mr. Rangel’s proposal is about paying for George W. Bush’s occupation of iraq. You remember that one, the occupation that NeoConservatives promised would be “paid for by Iraqi oil money”?
Or are Conservatives not permitted to speak of that?
By Ray, Wednesday, 31 October , 2007 @ 10:27 am
It would be nice if this was tied to deficit reduction but it as usual is not… CHIPS, Universal Heath Care, Free College, 401K allocation programs, ect all need cash flow to be funded…. The top 5% of tax payers pay 80%+ of the taxes..40% of the taxpayers pay zero taxes. Tell me what is fare. Under Rangels plan a two earner family making $200K is considered rich… $100K is a common salary…Refer the the Civil Sevice Pay scale…. This country has Trillions of $$ in obligations (SSN, military retirement, civil sevice retirement, Medcare, Medicare drugs etc) that consume 48% of the budget. 9% of all budget outlays go to paying the trillions in government paper…. I started my life with nothing and now you want to make me feel that all the hard work and sacrifice should be realocated to support someone who made bad choices in life or thinks the government is better at taking care of you… I am a self made, income confortible person that sees the goose that lays the goldens eggs being killed by a group of elites… I can afford to go overseas for my health care, I can move my money to other countries and hid it from the IRS, I can simply move if need be… Be careful what you ask for…you may just get it…… Good Luck..
By Philadelphia Steve, Wednesday, 31 October , 2007 @ 11:22 am
Re: ” I started my life with nothing and now you want to make me feel that all the hard work and sacrifice should be realocated to support someone who made bad choices in life or thinks the government is better at taking care of you…”
However the Republicans, with the full support of George W. Bush, passed all sorts of entitlements. The only difference is that Republicans put it on the credit card, mainly to the Chinese central bank, for our children to be impoverished paying off.
But, of course, since those were REPUBLICANS, writing the IOU’s, it was DIFFERENT. And all Conservatives are required to give the standard Republican FREE PASS, aren’t they?