From Perry's article in the WSJ last night, it looks like a serious and substantive proposal based on time tested conservative principles. A tax reform plan straight out of the Reagan playbook.
Less taxes, less spending, less government. Woohoo!
I have to run out for a few, so hopefully someone else will fill you in.
Yes, this is VERY substantive. Check the linked url and get a copy of his speech, pdfs, other downloads, outlines, etc. Tons of reform.
Before I go, I’ll share one of MY favorite parts with you.
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Eliminate Corporate Loopholes and Special-Interest Tax Breaks
Many Americans are rightly outraged by news stories that corporations like GE somehow pay nothing in taxes after earning more than $14 billion in profits.24 Due to the mind-boggling complexity of the tax code, large corporations can implement the most effective tax avoidance strategies money can buy, while American taxpayers are forced to send thousands of dollars to the federal government instead of spending it on their families. And unlike small businesses that cannot afford to house an army of lawyers and tax accountants, large and sophisticated corporations have the means to find and use every tax avoidance strategy that lies buried in the tax code. The myriad tax breaks, loopholes, and so-called tax expenditures available within the corporate tax code need to be phased out over time to ensure a level playing field for family-owned small businesses and multi-national corporations.
No More Earmarks
Individuals who depend on programs like Medicare and Social Security will never trust Washington to reform those programs as long as lawmakers spend billions of dollars on Bridges to Nowhere. In order to be trusted with vital entitlement programs, Congress and the president must first prove that they can be trusted to not waste money on smaller items like earmarks. A permanent ban on earmarks will demonstrate to American taxpayers that Washington is serious about tackling the nation’s unsustainable fiscal problems.
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End Baseline Budgeting and Require Common-Sense Scoring Rules
Current Washington budget rules assume that new programs and spending increases continue forever, an assumption that has led directly to the massive increase in federal spending over the last decade. In contrast, tax relief provisions are often assumed to expire at the end of a five- or ten-year window. The result is upward pressure on spending and tax collections, all due to arbitrary scoring rules written in the mid-1970’s.
Unlike Congress, families struggling to make ends meet cannot assume an infinite stream of money to make ends meet. Every single federal agency and program should be required to justify every dime of funding they wish to receive from taxpayers, instead of continued funding being treated as a given. It is time for Washington politicians to treat taxpayer money just like taxpayers do.
Dynamic scoring should also be required for tax legislation. The current system of static scoring ignores the fact that people and companies behave differently depending on how they are taxed. Dynamic scoring would take into account the incentives of different proposed tax policies and the increased economic growth and job creation that can result from lower tax rates and long-term predictability of the tax code.
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No More Bailouts
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, also known as TARP, was wrong when it was signed into law in 2008, it is wrong today, and it will be wrong tomorrow. Instead of bailing out irresponsibly managed banks with taxpayer money, policy makers should focus on removing the government-created incentives that created the financial crisis in the first place. Although alternatives to TARP had been proposed prior to the legislation’s ultimate passage, including a proposal from the Republican Study Committee, Washington politicians preyed on the fears of a financial collapse to ram the bailout through Congress.
Contrary to the claims of many TARP proponents that the bailout would allow troubled banks to expand lending and potentially prop up the faltering economy, lending contracted even further. According to an analysis of TARP expenditures by the Washington Post, lending declined in the immediate months following TARP’s passage and banks that received TARP money “reduced lending more sharply than banks that didn’t.”82