The Huntsman on the teevee phenomenon, where a candidate consistently polling at 1% gets invited on almost every cable show, is fascinating to me. In part, I assumed that the reason that Huntsman was becoming a cable TV darling was that he was the “reasonable Republican” foil to the Bachmann crazy, but here’s Huntsman on Face the Nation:
SCHIEFFER: That’s pretty clear. Let me just ask you some details on that. Does that mean that there will be no deduction for interest on mortgages, Governor? Does it? That’s what it means?
HUNTSMAN: That means no deductions. That means no deductions at all.
SCHIEFFER: What about — what about no child tax credit? I guess it means none of that, no earned income tax credit…
HUNTSMAN: None of that.
SCHIEFFER: But let me ask you this, does that mean that Social Security recipients are now going to have to pay taxes on their income?
Will veterans have to pay taxes on their disability checks and their benefits?
HUNTSMAN: Bob, what I’m asking for is a complete remake of our tax code. And in order to get where this country needs to be, in a position for the rest of the 21st century, given where of our other competitor nations have come since 1986 tax reform, which I thought was very successful under President Reagan — we forget we just haven’t made a whole lot of progress in the last 30 years.
Usually when you hear some crazy shit come out of a candidate’s mouth, you can assume there’s some demographic at whom it’s aimed. What Huntsman’s peddling can’t be popular with anyone.
Omnes Omnibus
True believer?
afferent input
I guarantee it’s popular with our Galtian overlords. Hence his presence on da TeeVee.
Southern Beale
You so sure about that? That “a complete remake of our tax code” line is a classic Teanut talking point. I know Huntsman is not a Teanut but still, all I ever hear from conservatives these days is about the need to “completely overhaul the tax code.”
This is usually a prelude to their waxing poetic about the Glorious Flat Tax. Overhauling the tax code is very appealing to people, who think our current system is to inefficient, complicated, and has too many loopholes.
cleek
and MSNBC.com has a big slide show “10 Thing You Didn’t Know About Mrs Huntsman”.
i didn’t even know there was a Mrs Huntsman!
Mary
Social security and veterans’ disability is already taxable.
Omnes Omnibus
@cleek: If you watch the slideshow, you will have learned eleven things today. Isn’t that nice?
cleek
@Omnes Omnibus:
it’s my day off. i ain’t learnin shit!
Amir Khalid
Jon Huntsman is probably not as smart as people say he is. The simplest explanation for his ubiquity on TV talk shows, I guess, is that he’s desperate to shift that humiliatingly low poll number.
Chris
One of my best friends and I watched the Republican debate back in 2007 with a room full of a Republicans, and did a soccer fan wave every time Reagan’s name was invoked, just to highlight the absurdity of the fetish.
The Thick-Skinned Rugged Individualists were NOT pleased.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary: Your facts will only confuse things.
mistermix
@Southern Beale: No deductions at all is cool with teatards? I guess I’m out of the nut loop.
@Mary: At income limits. I think Schieffer was getting at taxing the poor whose sole income is SS or disability and don’t hit those limits.
Southern Beale
@Mary:
I can’t believe Schieffer doesn’t know that. Surely he’s old enough to be getting Social Security, maybe he just turns it all over to his accountant ?
Amir Khalid
Hep meh! Comment in moderation despite removal of word potentially offensive to FYWP!
Southern Beale
@mistermix:
The ones I’ve talked to, yes. They want to get rid of all deductions and all the loopholes and credits and just have a flat tax. They also call it a “consumption tax.”
Ed Marshall
Ummmm, it’s actually popular with me. I think the mortgage deduction is one of the most pernicious and poorly thought out piece of social engineering in history (and maybe not so poorly thought out, certain advocates of the policy said out loud that making tying workers to a mortgage would keep them in line at work and unable to strike). It’s also lead to sprawl and ecological devastation.
Southern Beale
Here, my Teatard commenter Jim explains why a consumption tax is such a great idea in my “cheap labor” post from May:
This is the same BS I’ve heard from other Teanuts & regular conservitards as well.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve found when I edit a comment to remove an embargoed word the comment remains embargoed. But if you repost it as a new comment it will show up.
I don’t know why.
frapalinger
It will be popular with Bobo, Sully, and Joe Scar. They will all point to his lack of ideological flexibility because he will raise taxes – on the middle and working classes! That’s what they really love, an unashamed class warrior.
Southern Beale
I posted this last night, but I’ll repost it here … there’s an interesting discussion at my place about education and the current jones toward using computers and other high-tech crap to teach kids … and how kids’ test scores are actually stagnating as a result.
boss bitch
He’s just positioning for the sane vote in 2016.
doink.
Southern Beale
@Ed Marshall:
I wonder if the banking and real estate industries will ever allow the mortgage deduction to go away, though. I know that was discussed a little bit earlier this year…
MonkeyBoy
I do think the tax code needs to be strongly overhauled but I think doing so would be near impossible. I don’t see how it could be done incrementally and a for a total rewrite it would be hard to anticipate what new problems it introduces.
For one example consider the mortgage interest deduction. While mortgage holders of course like this the rule essentially subsidies banks and contributed to the housing bubble.
I can’t see one such group with tax advantages agreeing to forgo them as long as other groups still get tax advantages, and thus the incremental problem.
jwest
No deductions at all is a very good idea, but not in the context that Huntsman advocates.
Eliminating all deductions eliminates the primary job of lobbyists, makes taxing fair and simple and gives the country a competitive advantage so jobs will not go overseas. However, eliminating deductions must be done right as with the Fair Tax Plan.
Ed Marshall
@Southern Beale:
Yeah, Huntsman makes the proposal “revenue neutral” by slashing tax rates , which isn’t attractive to me, but I’m actually surprised to find any Republican actually trying to pay for their policy proposals instead of making bullshit promises to pay for them by promising undisclosed “spending cuts”.
On Edit: Hell no they won’t allow that to happen.
JCT
@Amir Khalid: I also think that he gets all of these invites because they are desperate to show that not all of the GOP candidates are hopelessly craven, borderline imbeciles. After this interview, they may have scraped bottom.
Mino
Ah, yes, reform the tax code. Remove the loopholes and lower the rate. Reinsert loopholes and keep lower rates. Is anyone fooled by this?
dr. bloor
Bobblehead show bookers regard Huntsman as being a fresh new face to break the McCain-Lieberman monotony.
cleek
@Mino:
sadly, yes.
Napoleon
@Southern Beale:
I thought SS was indexed to your income. The more you earn by working (and I do think it is from working) the less you get from SS. If correct the only question is does it phase out at some point.
Mark S.
SCHIEFFER: Well, what about what Sarah Palin said yesterday, let’s just do away with corporate taxes. Do you think — would you be willing to go that far?
HUNTSMAN: Listen, that’s a great political bromide. And everybody would love to go down to zero in terms of corporate taxes.
Whoa, who is this everybody you speak of? I would guess that 93% of the country don’t want there to be no corporate tax. I don’t remember a lot of cheering when it turned out GE paid no taxes last year.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.:
Everyone who matters. Duh.
Amir Khalid
Further to my comment #8:
Huntsman needs a decent poll number now, better than that risible 1%, or he won’t be a credible candidate in ’16.
Linda Featheringill
@Napoleon: #28
Nope.
The amount of SS you get is related to how much money you’ve made in your lifetime because the more you earn, the more you put into SS.
So a person who was stuck in low-paying jobs for all of his/her working life will receive less in SS, even though that person most likely doesn’t have a pension or substantial savings.
SSI [I forget what the “I” stands for] is a supplemental payment that is based on current income. That might be what you’re thinking of.
cleek
@Amir Khalid:
doesn’t “running for 2016” require him to assume that Obama is going to win in 2012?
and wouldn’t that then require him to do what he can to make sure that happens? cause, if he fights too hard now, and damages Obama enough for someone in the GOP to win in 2012, he’ll have torpedoed his 2016 plan…
a dilemma
Mino
@Napoleon: You are allowed a certain amount of income without changing your benefits. After 72(?), no amount of income will affect your benefits.
PurpleGirl
@Linda Featheringill:
SSI = Supplemental Security Income
It’s for low benefit seniors on Social Security; you can also get it if you are disabled. Often it’s more than Social Security Disability would be. I never figured that one out, but that’s how it worked out for a friend.
ETA: Maybe it was that she was getting welfare at the time (circa 1995). I don’t remember the whole story. It was weirdly complicated.
Mino
effect. Sorry, grammar police.
catclub
@JCT: I think he gets all those invites because he is a billionaire. It is the same reason that FOX ‘news’ does not ridiculed by journalists — they might (hope to ?) get hired by those guys.
RalfW
Eliminating nearly all middle-class deductions and zeroing out the capital gains tax…that’s “moderate” now.
If Dems can’t find a way to message against this menu of evil, then we really are fu*ked.
Amanda in the South Bay
I know that one VA benefit-specifically, the Gi Bill-isn’t taxable. That would be pretty devastating to a lot of veterans if it was.
catclub
@Mino: lots and lots of people.
JPL
Huntsman thinks ridding the rich of those nasty taxes on unearned income will magically create jobs so the poor are just going to have to pay more in taxes. Walmart sales should skyrocket with that type of thinking. It’s on average a 2000 dollar increase on the middle class.
I’m still for a flat tax but only if the first 50,000 dollars of income is excluded. Therefore if you earn 55,000 only 5000 is taxable and if you earn 500,000 only 450,000 is taxable.
Hawes
Whenever Huntsman or someone like him talks about inflicting pain on the middle class, Tom Friedman and David Brooks get tiny erections.
Satanicpanic
The “I Say Unpopular Shit” candidate will never be the winner no matter how much the media wants it.
dmsilev
@Chris:
A worthy activity, but may I suggest upgrading to a set of vuvuzelas?
Samara Morgan
Can’t sell product without a plausible horserace.
i, personally, cant wait for Conservative Thunderdrome.
8 angry clowns enter, one angry clown leaves.
an old friend said to me….but Perry is all we’ve got!
/ineffable sadness
JPL
@dmsilev: What a great idea.
Sly
Not quite true. It’s popular with people who believe that people who are struggling to pay their bills aren’t quite desperate enough.
@MonkeyBoy:
Historically, housing prices have been fairly stable. Existing homes values increased by about half a percent a year from 1950 to 2000 above inflation (and then shot up for various reasons). The big, systemic increase in housing prices since around the mid seventies has been primarily due to two trends:
1) Newly constructed homes have caused the average home size to nearly double over the past forty years. The average size of a home in 1970 was 1400 sq. ft, compared to 2700 sq. ft. in 2009.
2) The cost of paying a mortgage has increased, Mortgage interest rates are lower than they were 40 years ago, but you’re paying a lower rate on a much higher principal.
And, remember, interest from all personal loans was deductible before 1986, including revolving debt, and we’ve seen an increased rate of cost increases on all personal debt since then. So if MID causes inflation, its negligible compared to other factors. It’s certainly not on the level of how poor securitization standards for mortgages created a whole lot of moral hazard for mortgage lenders who, in turn, lowered lending standards.
MID is a backdoor subsidy to lenders, but that’t generally not a make-or-break issue because their ability to game the system can be mitigated through a regulatory response. I don’t think it would justify scrapping one of the main vehicles for housing affordability a family has.
Chris
@dmsilev:
Well, dude, this was 2007… Vuvuzelas hadn’t become infernally ubiquitous yet.
Fantastic idea, though, thanks!
sherparick
The Huntsman Demographic: Corporate CEOs, movie stars, Sports stars and their agents, and folks whose income can be classified as Capital Gains. Steve Schwartzman and Pete Petersen will go from paying 15% tax on their $500 million to $1 billion a year to paying NOTHING AT ALL. That is about the upper 1% of the U.S. Population. They must really dig this guy.
My own view on taxes is probably pretty heterodox for someone on the left in that I don’t like the corporate income tax. I think in our system, no matter how you “reform it,” the K street lobbyists will start working on both Congress and the IRS carve out exceptions and substitutions. It is the primary excuse that CEOs have to pay shareholder money into political campaigns. I would like to see it zero’d out and replace it, in-part with a carbon tax, a VAT tax, and tax surcharge of 25% on all those earning more than %1,000,000 a year. Also, a repeal of treating capital gains and dividends differently than ordinary income (the most regressive, rich people benefits, in our entire system). It is always a good thing to remember that a corporation is not a real thing, but an organization of people, and that right now most corporations are being run by the people who control the corporation, the CEOs and their immediate underlings, and the primary job qualification for being a CEO of a publicly traded company is to be effectively a sociopath who can avoid getting caught breaking any law. (See Milton Friedman’s article from the 1970s on the “responsibility” of a CEO.).
I would also have Congress pass a law that would state that corporations, as fictional persons, have no more Constitutional rights than any character of fiction. As creations of the State, corporations are subject to regulation by the state, including regulation of all corporate speech.
Bex
I saw an interview with Huntsman on the Snooze Hour. He talked about “shared sacrifice” when the subject of raising taxes on the rich came up. I yelled at the TV about just exactly what kind of sacrifice I would share with a multi-millionare chemical fortune heir. No surprise that he’d love to see corporate taxes go away completely.
Mike in NC
Like Donald Trump, Jon Huntsman is merely a bored billionaire looking for media attention. He’ll call off his vanity campaign sometime in the next couple of months.
BBA
@cleek: He can always run for the Democratic nomination in ’16. By then we’ll have slipped far enough to the right that he’ll be a mainstream Democrat.
Amir Khalid
@cleek:
Huntsman wouldn’t stand a chance primarying an incumbent Republican President in 2016, true. But unless that 1% poll number shifts upward in a big way, and right now it doesn’t look likely, he’s a no-hoper in 2012. I guess his chances of winning the White House in 2016depend on two things happening in 2012:
(1)Obama being re-elected and
(2)him being the runner-up in the primaries, making it his turn in 2016.
wrb
@sherparick
I like this but I’d make it simpler: a carbon tax and a confiscatory inheritance tax are all that is needed.
An upper-income tax surcharge would be ok but is no big deal as long as the wealth isn’t passed to the kiddies, making a new feudal princely caste to feed off the rest of us in perpetuity.
By wiping out all other taxes in exchange for a carbon tax, passing a carbon tax becomes more likely- you can show that it isn’t just an additional tax but a great simplification.
Southern Beale
@JCT:
That is exactly right. The GOP and their media enablers need to point to someone and say: Look! They’re not all batshit insane!
Southern Beale
BTW yesterday caught the tail end of a Weekend Edition piece, wish I caught the name of the person being interviewed, she was some academic type … she cited a behavior study where people all had an increasing number of coins, and everyone was given two coins they had to give to either the person immediately above them (who had one more coin than they did) or the person immediately beneath them in line (who had one less coin than they did.) By giving the person beneath them their two coins, that person automatically became wealthier than the giver by one coin.
They found that most of the time, people gave the person beneath them their 2 coins. The sole exception being people at the END of the line. If you were next to last in line, they found people didn’t want to give the person beneath them their two coins because then that would make them the poorest.
This seems to explain a lot of Teabagger behavior and voting against their own self-interest. Because they already feel marginalized and don’t want those beneath them to jump over them in the prosperity line.
Anyone else familiar with this study? I’d love to read more about it.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: I’ve heard about it before, and googled with no success. It is fascinating, and describes exactly the situation that puzzled me so as a child; the particular brand of racism that will gladly oppress people if it means their sorry-a$$ lives are better by comparison.
Alex S.
Huntsman might be proof that republicans just want to elect someone to piss of liberals. Huntsman is too civilized and his platform, basically rock-hard fiscal conservatism, is unpopular.
Irony Abounds
As long as the rates are progressive enough, eliminating most or all deductions and credits is the way to go. Stop social engineering (and lobbying influence) with the tax code. It should have one function: raising enough revenue to pay for what the government needs to spend. Huntsman undoubtedly wants flatter rates than I do, but the concept isn’t the problem.
Chris Grrr™
@56, 57: last-place aversion.
h/t to Reddit
Barry
“Stop social engineering (and lobbying influence) with the tax code. ”
I’ll tell the lobbyists (and those who hire them) to allow this :)
Mino
The tax code is not necessarily the primary reason that industries lobby. In fact, it might be pretty far down the list anymore. Many other things legislated by governmant are reflected in their bottom line.
Southern Beale
@Chris Grrr™:
THANK YOU!!!! You’re my hero. My Google-fu sucked yesterday.
Frankensteinbeck
@Irony Abounds:
The problem is that the people arguing for removing all the deductions are also arguing for either a non-progressive ‘flat tax’ or replacing the income tax with a universal sales tax. Both of these massively shift the tax burden down towards the poor while claiming to treat everyone equally.
The even further problem is that they’re including Medicare, Medicaid, and SS as part of what’s being replaced. Why, you can’t even claim to be creating a simple tax system without removing SS, can you?
This is an old Libertarian position. It’s based off of their consistent belief that there must be a simple solution to everything that only they’re smart enough to have figured out.
SiubhanDuinne
There’s some CW out there that even if Romney could be competitive in the general he will never be able to win the GOP nomination because he’s a Mormon.
Why wouldn’t the same apply to Huntsman?
Frankensteinbeck
@SiubhanDuinne:
It has often been argued that it does apply to Huntsman. It’s just considered moot because he’s so far out of line with the GOP core voters anyway.
Ella in New Mexico
@Hawes:
That’s only because their income covers the cost of Viagra.
Ella in New Mexico
@Hawes:
Yeah, but only because they can afford the daily per-pill cost of Viagra.
Ella in New Mexico
@dmsilev:
Yeah, but only because their income covers the pill-per-day costs of sildenafil.
Ella in New Mexico
@Hawes:
Yeah, but only because they can afford the daily per-pill costs of sildanafil.
However, given the political fixation on this topic today, I imaging they have switched to the longer acting tadalafil.
(using generic names cause WP Moderation bumps me for their trade names, BTW.)
Gus
Oh, I’m sure the Sullivan types will be touting his bravery.