Speaker John Boehner gave a speech this week where he laid out the Republican "plan" for jobs. In addition to fairly vague criticism of "excessive regulation", he discussed their plans on the fiscal side of things. Their entire fiscal plan is, you guessed it, to "simplify the tax code" by lowering rates and eliminating loopholes. They bash Obama's measures to cut payroll taxes and offer tax credits as "gimmicks", despite having supported similar measures in the past.
They talk about completely overhauling the tax while claiming, as Boehner did in his speech, that the big reason employers aren't hiring is "uncertainty" about their future taxes. So their plan to turn around the economy is to put every single line of the tax code on the table, endangering every subsidy, loophole and incentive that every business in America depends on to keep their doors open. Sounds like their plan would cause a lot more uncertainty for job creators.
It would be one thing if they thought they'd be able to do this quickly. But, given the current environment, heading into an election year, there's no chance it would be a fast process. And every lobbyist in town would prepare to fight tooth-and-nail against any elimination of their specific loophole.
Meanwhile, nothing would be done to help the economy in the short term. So we'll still be stuck with high unemployment even longer, with the Republicans not only standing in the way, but actually making things worse, according to their own rhetoric.
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4 comments:
I missed the speech, but looked up the Republican jobs plan online http://www.gop.gov/resources/library/documents/jobs/theplan.pdf. It's interesting that he didn't mention the immigration reform that's in the plan. The GOP wants to reform the visa system so that companies can import highly skilled workers from other countries.
Immigration doesn't play well with his base. After all the "Grand Bargain" talk during the deficit debate, it's not surprising that Boehner's not poking the Tea Partiers on this.
Are you actually defending corporate welfare & crony capitalism?
"every subsidy, loophole and incentive that every business in America depends on to keep their doors open. Sounds like their plan would cause a lot more uncertainty for job creators."
I would expect that if everyone had to play by the *same* rules - meaning no loopholes, subsidies, incentives - it would be a lot easier to make decisions about hiring/not hiring someone... After Solyndra, do you still think that the government has any idea what is and what isn't good business?
I'm all for reforming the tax code, but the problem is that, given that Republicans blame "uncertainty" for the lack of hiring, they need to acknowledge that their proposal would by their own logic make things worse in the short run.
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