|
March 17, 2000
GOING FOR GROWTH
Liberal Republicans are screaming about the Club for Growth, a new PAC founded by Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, National Review President Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes, and investor Dick Gilder. (Moore is also affiliated with NR.) "On a scale of one to ten, this is an eleven in terms of intensity," New York squish Sherwood Boehlert told the Washington Post.
What's got them upset is that the Club intends to help primary challengers to incumbent Republicans who do not vote for pro-growth policies such as
tax cuts. The Club is supporting a challenger to New Jersey Republican Marge Roukema. So is outgoing Oklahoma congressman Tom Coburn, which has
the left wing of the GOP particularly upset.
The distressed Republicans are demanding that the House leadership get the PAC to stop; otherwise, they threaten to withhold money from the National
Republican Campaign Committee. This is peculiar. The NRCC is run by Tom Davis, who's nobody's idea of a hard-right conservative. And anyone who
thinks that the Club is going to follow Speaker Hastert's marching orders doesn't know Steve Moore, Dusty Rhodes, or Dick Gilder.
GAS LINES
A couple of conservatives — Irwin Stelzer in the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post — are arguing that the gas-price spike is an argument, oddly enough, for higher taxes on gas. Stelzer wants an
oil import fee while Krauthammer wants to raise the gas tax. In return, both say, other taxes would be cut. (Yeah, right.) The goal is to minimize our dependence on foreign oil. But hold on: The reason our dependence is problematic is that it makes us vulnerable to higher prices. How can the
solution be to raise prices ourselves? What Krauthammer and Stelzer are suggesting is that we shoot ourselves in the foot to keep OPEC from
hitting us first.
THE BAD OLD DAYS
Senator Connie Mack, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, had a mischievous idea during the primaries: Since Al Gore was bragging about
having voted against Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut, why not try to figure out where we would be if it hadn't passed? He asked the Joint Committee on
Taxation to calculate how much more Americans would pay in taxes if the 1980 rate structure still applied. And since tax brackets were not indexed
for inflation prior to 1981 — producing the phenomenon of "bracket creep" as inflation pushed people into higher tax brackets even though they
weren't really doing any better — he stipulated that those 1980 rates apply at the same levels of income they did back then, with no inflation
adjustment.
The result: If the 1980 tax code still applied, individual income tax liabilities would be twice as high as they are. (This assumes what is surely not the case: that incomes would be the same as they are under the present tax code. They would doubtless be lower.) Single people making more than $41,500 in taxable income would be paying a 70 percent tax rate
on any raise they earned; ditto for couples making more than $60,000. People making between $40,000 and $50,000 would see the federal government
take 26 percent of their income, as opposed to the 18 percent they currently lose.
| Think a friend would want to read this? Send it along.
|
Updated By:
Ramesh Ponnuru - Senior Editor
John J. Miller - National Political Reporter
Kate Dwyer - Editorial Associate
For a selection of recent Washington Bulletins
click here
If you would like to receive the Washington Bulletin via e-mail, please
send an e-mail message to majordomo@us.net. The first line in the body
of the message should read: "subscribe washingtonbulletin".
In order to ensure that you are not accidentally subscribed, you will
receive a reply message with a confirmation number, to which you must
reply to complete the subscription process.
To unsubscribe leave the subject line blank and have the first line in the body of the message read: "unsubscribe washingtonbulletin". |