The GOP would be better off saying "Hey we will write-off all student loan debt". They would have college kids lined up a mile (and it would not be a horrible idea). It is very wonky, but I would rather see a plan to pull money out of circulation than a tax cut.
Trash the progressive income tax, make it a sales tax. Great plan if your goal is to shift even more of the tax burden onto the poorer and away from the richest. So I can see why you all like it. Because for goodness sake, the richest 1% is only getting about 20% of the nation's income and have about 40% of the nation's wealth. They need a break. For some, or many, more is never enough.
I like the idea of offering to let the voters decide between massive programs or having most of the revenue stream directed at them individually in the form of significant refund checks. Lay off the surplus bureaucrats, sell the RE - give the money back. I think that would be a real automatic check on the size of government.
The Dems would top it instantly. OTH, the Dems would have to stand between the voters and a big refund check from the savings from very large budget cuts. Better politics than the empty platitudes the RNC has been spouting for decades.
Think state and local. Instead of a few thousand for "school choice": 1. propose legislation giving the entire assessment to the parents. 2. propose legislation granting an automatic K-12 teacher credential to every college grad. 3. Allow teachers to teach up to 10 students from their homes. That would be about $20K voucher/child/year. More if enough parents chose not to send their children to the public schools and the RE and buildings were sold. Millions of new instant Republicans.
You've made an excellent point, politicians campaigning for Federal office are generally evaluated by voters based on what they will bring home from the Federal pie at the least cost to them individually. While a case may be made that everyone who spends also pays taxes, very few of even those who are working are paying taxes equal to the benefits they recognize as being provided them. The non-working who receive their living needs from government, as well as a large number of the working who experience very little or no cost imposed on them as a result of government waste and spending have become an increasingly large voting bloc who in their view have nothing to lose as a result of voting for candidates who are most liberal fiscally and/or socially. Only when more people are finding government spending as a cost to them directly will/would Federal spending be reduced. One solution to the problem would be to replace welfare and all other government assistance programs with workfare, making it necessary for some labour, even if non-productive, be performed by all able bodied recipients, and it could be accomplished by requiring some more labour intensive task resulting in an hourly wage above the minimum wage which would make even a minimum wage job more attractive as a result. As such FICA tax could also be deducted from their earnings making Social Security and Medicare available to them at retirement age. Government should not mandate allowing some to live off the earnings of others or debts being accumulated and passed on to future generations. Repeal the 16th and 17th amendments would be a great start. Lincoln imposed a Federal income tax in 1861, and the first progressive income tax occurred in 1862, and ended in 1873. From the time of our founding until 1913 inflation occurred offset by periods of deflation keeping the value of our currency relatively constant. Government has since that time created a situation where deflation would be harmful, requiring constant but controlled inflation which as a result has produced a growing disparity of wealth, and is destroying, or perhaps more accurately put, has destroyed our ability to compete with our foreign competitors.
What we call an income tax is actually a tax on personal profit. And trying to figure out personal profit is a vague process that invites corruption. The only difference between a loop hole and a deduction is whether you like it or not. But yes, either the tax we have or an income tax is necessarily an unfair basis for taxation. Fair means without bias or preference. It means equal. We give people equal citizenship, if we want to support that with a fair tax it would be an equal tax. The problem with a fair tax is 319 million people cannot collect over 3 trillion dollars fairly. Most of us cannot contribute that much.