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June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in a break with his party, said he could support tax increases to help reduce the federal government’s budget deficit. The brother of former President George W. Bush told a congressional panel in Washington today that he could back a theoretical deficit-reduction package that would include $1 in tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. 1 Comments Weigh InCorrections? Personal Post More from PostPolitics Obama: From dove to tough guy Aaron Blake JUN 1 THE FIX | When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s image is starting to look a...

One of the more memorable moments during the last presidential campaign was a GOP debate in August, 2011. Fox’s Bret Baier asked the eight candidates if they would agree to $1 in new taxes for every $10 in spending cuts. Not one person raised his (or her) hand. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Richard Nixon—all tax hikers at one point or another during their presidencies—would have raised their hands, and might have been booed off stage. That’s how much the Republican party has changed. Which brings us to Jeb Bush. During his eight years as governor of Florida (1999-2007),...

Americans don’t much like the federal tax system, a recent Pew Research Center report finds. But it’s not, as you might imagine, because they think they pay too much. Rather, they think people other than themselves don’t pay their fair share.Some six-in-ten Americans in the Pew Research survey said they were bothered a lot by the feeling that “some wealthy people” and “some corporations” don’t pay their fair share. Only 27% cited their own tax bills as something that bothered them a lot, even though 40% thought they paid more than their fair share given what they get from...

Challenging the liberal principle of social egalitarianism, which idealizes "equal results" instead of "equal rights." Donald Trump has shaken up today’s craven political establishment like Tom Paine shook up the Tories of colonial America. He has irreverently proposed genuine solutions to the invasion of “illegals.” He has attacked the poltroons of Washington and the talking heads of the media. He speaks rudely and boldly. The question now is, has he also been daring enough to put forth a bold tax reform plan? The answer is yes and no. Trump’s tax plan has numerous great features, but it also has one...

Donald Trump is finally showing us more of his economic plan beyond the "Make America Great Again" slogan on his red hat. America has now learned: -- He wants to tax the rich more and the middle class less. -- He wants to lower corporate taxes. -- He wants to cut government spending and stop raising the debt ceiling. "The hedge fund people make a lot of money and they pay very little tax," Trump said in an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg. "I want to lower taxes for the middle class." In short, Trump is willing to raise taxes on...

16 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declared, “I think flat tax is okay” on Friday’s broadcast of the “Matt Murphy Show” on Birmingham, AL’s WAPI. Trump said, “Who knows taxes better than me?” He continued, “You know, when they talk about fixing the tax, it’s so complicated, that people have to go and use H&R Block to do a $50,000 — a man who makes $50,000 has to spend money –.” Host Matt Murphy then cut in to ask Trump if he supports the fair tax. Trump answered, “Well, I think fair tax is okay. And I think flat tax...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that on taxes he supports, simplifying the tax code and wants to “reduce taxes” on Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.” Although, he later added on CNN’s “New Day” that “I know exactly what I want to do, I just don’t want to announce it yet.” Asked about his tax plan, Trump said, “You have so many plans Steve, and you have the Fair Tax, and you have the flat tax, and you have the current system, but it’s too complicated. Frankly, what we should do is…start it off by...

Now that Donald Trump has the American People’s attention, will he support tax reform which will end the nefarious and slavish socialist experiment allowing Congress to lay and collect taxes calculated from profits, gains salaries and other lawfully earned incomes? Will he work for real tax reform and move us to a federal tax system which taxes consumption as our founders intended? Carly Fiorina was correct when she said about our current system “The complexity and lack of transparency only benefits the powerful and connected while crushing small businesses and innovation. The result is crony capitalism–because only big businesses can...

Washington, D.C. gets back nearly six times, per capita, what it contributes For those who believe that the federal government should tax us, either by income tax or a fair tax, or any other direct means of taxation, must understand that doing so only creates socialism among the states (taking from one to give to another), as the following table shows (A more complete table can also be found at Tax Foundation Special Report No. 158, “Federal Tax Burdens and Spending by State). The table is from 2005 (I haven’t found a newer one, yet), so I would suppose that...

Don't know if the link will work for you since it's probably behind a pay for usage wall. In summary, Rand Paul, in a Wall Street Journal Opinion tomorrow, will propose a complete rework of the federal tax code. Quote: "My tax plan would blow up the tax code and start over. In consultation with some of the top tax experts in the country, including the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, former presidential candidate Steve Forbes and Reagan economist Arthur Laffer, I devised a 21st-century tax code that would establish a 14.5% flat-rate tax applied equally to all personal income, including...

There has been a lot of talk lately about Tariffs and peopel wanting to implement larger Tariffs in order to boost domestic production and employment. But here is the sticking point, and that is the definition of the Word Tariff. A tariff is a tax on imports or exports IS A TAX. And like all taxes it does follow certain rules of thumb and behaviors and one of those is the "laffer curve", which means if you raise a Tariff too high it will have the opposite effect of what any other tax would have. Also if raised too high...

Fox News has decided that Mike Huckabee should not be the Republican nominee, so Chris Wallace went on the attack against Huckabee’s flat tax plan on Fox News Sunday. Video: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)CHRIS WALLACE: You want to abolish the income tax. You want to abolish the IRS and create a fair tax, which as you say is a national sales tax, but critics say the problem with that is that it’s too regressive. The Tax Policy Center said this, that “the average rate for the lowest income group would exceed 33% while the average rate for the top group would fall to...

ATHENS, Ga. — Presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Friday that he will release in the coming weeks details of his promised "simple, flat tax" to replace existing graduated income tax rates. But the Texas senator told the Associated Press that he's still not decided on key details, such as whether a flat tax would also replace payroll taxes and taxes on investment income....

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson Sunday touted a flat tax plan that he says even the nation’s poor would pay if he’s elected. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Carson said it’s "very condescending" to think that poor people can’t pay taxes at the same flat rate as wealthier Americans. Carson said he got the idea for his plan – he calls it a proportional tax – from tithing in the Bible. Using a 10 percent rate as an example, Carson said "You make $10 billion a year, you pay $1 billion. You make $10 a year, you pay one dollar."...

The flat tax is back. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have both floated an across-the-board tax rate as they've launched their 2016 presidential bids. Neither Cruz nor Paul has spelled out the exact details of their plan, but both senators clearly see the flat tax as a way to appeal to both free-market conservatives that advocate for broad-based tax cuts, and the Tea Party sympathizers concerned with government intrusion. “Moving to a simple flat tax and just padlocking the IRS — I think that is a powerful populist issue,” Cruz said Friday on “The Adam Carolla Show.”...

Ted Cruz has developed a reputation as the most conservative of the major 2016 Republican presidential candidates, but he hasn't taken many specific policy positions to earn that moniker. One exception? His longtime support for a flat tax. The flat tax dramatically lowers the top tax rate and exempts capital gains and dividends from taxation. It's astonishingly regressive: the rich pay far less, hedge fund managers and private equity types like Mitt Romney would pay literally nothing, and while the exact rate varies from plan to plan, it's certainly not going to be as low as 10 or 15 percent,...

Imagine there's no IRS. It isn't hard to do. No Obamacare to pay for. And no budget deficits too. Imagine all the people, living with a flat tax. You may say Ted Cruz is a dreamer, but he's not the only one. He hopes some day—especially if you live in Iowa—you'll join him, and, well, he'll be president. That, at least, was the message during his announcement, oddly redolent of John Lennon, that he's officially seeking the highest office in the land. It was a conservative wish list to not only repeal the 21st century, but the 20th, too. About...

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have released a blueprint for federal tax reform called “The Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Plan.” First, we should not embrace the language of progressive socialism in believing tax reform should have as a goal to advance “family fairness.” The plan should simply be entitled “The American Growth and Opportunity Plan.” That said, the Lee-Rubio plan is a great improvement over the current system. For the individual tax structure, the plan introduces a two-tier system to replace the current seven tax brackets. This plan moves America from a...

Yes, believe it or not, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker actually spoke at some length at the dinner this past week where Rudy Giuliani charged that President Obama doesn’t love America. All the hullabaloo went to Giuliani, but in terms of the Republican presidential race, a number of Scott Walker’s pointed comments about policy and politicians are not to be missed. First a word about the dinner itself, which was generously backed by John Catsimatidis. It was the second event sponsored by the Committee to Unleash American Prosperity, a new group founded by Arthur Laffer, Steve Moore, Steve Forbes, and myself....

Tax Reform: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, might have hit on the most important fiscal issue facing the U.S.: the need for major tax reform. But he takes it a step further. Speaking Monday, the senator from Texas threw another thunderbolt: Republicans should use their control of Congress to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. "We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer," he told a crowd at a Heritage Foundation event. "And I'll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS."...