As they have continued to run attacks against Congresswoman Kristi Noem, the attacks themselves have come under scrutiny and drawn attention, as outside media is beginning to take a look at the content of the criticism, and the entire tax reform package being proposed.
And as leading national conservative blog RedState talks to tax reform groups, they’re wondering what the heck the Club for Growth is thinking? Because they’re not seeing the forest through the trees:
We need to rewrite tax law – that has for decades incentivized a mass American business exodus. This America Last, “Made In America Tax” code – is terrible policy.
The tax reform currently proffered by Congressional Republicans – is several HUGE steps in the right directions.
and..
This is the “Border Adjustment Tax (BAT).” Which is drawing some fire – from normally friendly people: “The Club for Growth has begun an advertising campaign aimed at pressuring Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., a tax writer, to oppose a contentious House GOP proposal to tax imports and exempt exports, the latest salvo in the battle to shape lawmakers’ attempts to overhaul the tax code.”
And they are firing – with some seriously faulty numbers: “The group said that the border adjustments proposal would increase an average family’s annual expenditures by about $1,700.”
Thankfully, Club for Growth is engaged in highly flawed tax reform analysis. They’ve unilaterally taken the BAT out of the entire Republican reform package – and assessed its cost as a stand alone proposal. Thankfully, this is ridiculous.
Yes, a 20% tax on imports – all by its lonesome – costs money. But that’s not all Republican tax reform does. As Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist recently noted on CNBC: “(W)hat you’re looking at is we’re going to take the corporate rate to 20, we’re going to do full expensing, get rid of the death tax, the AMT, cut the capital gains tax. These things are all consensus issues. The whole package fits together. In it, is border adjustable.”
Thus, in totality, Republican tax reform will SAVE average families about $4,600 per year – per, again, The Tax Foundation.
When Club for Growth hits Noem, it is being done with severely cherry-picked numbers, and conveniently overlooks the fact that families will save an average of $4600 a year. Which is a world of difference between what the out-of-state groups are telling us on our TV and the truth.
A good lesson to remember from this past election.
This Red State article makes mention of something that Reagan said on the Johnny Carson show back in 1975, and I heard Janklow, especially back in the early 80s, make this same contention often, and that is that you cannot tax businesses because they can pass the tax costs on to the consumer, but if that is the truth, then why the need for all of the business tax cuts which Trump is proposing and Republicans have clambered for for years if these taxes really do not affect business growth? In fact, does not this claim prove that a corporate income tax in South Dakota would not hurt economic development?
And I would also mention that the $1500 is not cherry picking, because the $ 4600 savings which is claimed for consumers in this article is merely aggregate and assumes that most consumers would directly benefit from the removal of the death tax, which does not tax any one with an estate worth less than 5.4 million dollars to begin with, and the removal of capital gains taxes, a tax which most consumers cannot identify with. So when you realize that, then you realize that the average consumer does not benefit from removal of the death tax or capital gains taxes nor the assumed aggregate savings, but is stuck with the Made in America Tax (MAT), which apparently is a yearly $ 1500 a year bill….
If you tax corporations more they will have to increase the price for their goods and services; more consumers will do without their goods and services, and the profits will go down. I know liberals see the word “profit” as an evil thing, but then they want everyone to live together in a socialist utopia. I, however, don’t see the government as a good, all-knowing, all-caring parent figure; I can take care of myself.
You are correct, but left out the other possibility. If there is no room for increasing the price to pass on to consumers, then the corporations have to take a smaller profit and have less to pass on to the stockholders in the form of dividends.
So what. A corporation or company should be about the actual company and its mission, its employees, and its customers. The entire concept of having stockholders and the thought of them some how being supreme is a cancer upon the business community and overtime it destroys all companies, and their quality assurance, and their worker moral and thus product knowledge, which in turn leads to the eventual deterioration of the company that the stockholders hold stock in….
Nowhere in my comment did I suggest that that was not true. You just assumed and ran with it…. Didn’t I write about being “stuck” with a $ 1500 bill?
I don’t view the attacks on Noem as all that bad of attacks. They mostly say call her and tell her to oppose the tax. The ads aren’t really ripping on her.
It didn’t seem like it was all that bad of an attack.
The only reason to believe that the other tax reforms in Paul Ryan’s plan are dependent upon also passing the Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) is the mistaken claim, which is usually made by liberals, that the aggregate plan has to be revenue neutral. As the tax cuts of the 1920s, 1950s, and 1980s, proved, however, an overall reduction in taxes causes an increase in tax revenues because of the economic growth that the tax cuts stimulate. It is, therefore, still accurate to point out that the BAT would cost average American families $1,700 year.
I trust the nonpartisan Club for Growth much more than I do the highly partisan Red State. It is time that Republicans stop supporting the type of cronyism exemplified by Ryan’s tax plan, i.e. tax cuts that favor large exporting corporations over the small companies that account for 85% of imports.
The Republicans in Congress need to cut taxes for everyone, but the BAT is a $1.2 trillion tax increase on consumers.
The only plan in the U.S. Congress with any chance of curing our economic problems is the single rate consumption tax enacted through The Fair Tax act of 2017, HR 25 in the House, S 18 in the Senate. It is America’s Big Solution and the only real economic stimulus plan in all of congress. Further, it eliminates the IRS and requires repeal of the 16th Amendment within seven years or the FAIRtax sunsets and reverts back to an income tax. http://www.BigSolution.org
I think the average person learned a long time age not to believe any numbers that come out of Washington. Political consultants will twist their facts to fit the narrative. Hence the rise of Trump!
Here is my position.
By itself, I don’t think the BAT is a good thing for our nation or our state. If it is part of comprehensive tax reform which is over-all a net positive, I will accept it because compromise is necessary to get it passed.