Will the House Republican Plan Lead to a Tax Increase?

ATR ^ | 2011-07-26 | Mattie Corrao

[92nina]

Will the House Republican plan to solve the debt limit impasse lead to a tax hike? In a word: No.

The release yesterday of the House Republican plan to solve the debt limit debate in a two-step process has raised questions as to whether the second step in the proposal will lead to a tax increase. After an initial debt extension of lesser value than cuts enacted, the proposal enacts a Select Committee that is responsible for finding $1.8 trillion in savings before more borrowing authority can be exercised in the spring.

The Select Committee will be comprised of twelve members, with leadership from both parties and both chambers selecting who will serve on the committee. The Committee is required to submit a proposal to enact real savings that must be approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by the President. Only then will the debt ceiling be raised, again at an amount less than the enacted amount of spending cuts.

That the bill does not explicitly prohibit tax increases as part of the Committee’s final plan has caused some concern. It shouldn’t. By holding firm throughout the debt limit debate on their pledge not to raise taxes, Republicans have removed taxes completely from any debt limit negotiations. There is no reason to believe that the intervening months will weaken this resolve...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/house-republican-plan-lead-tax-increase-a6365#ixzz1TKWy6tw2

[92nina]

Tax increase would be highly unlikely, but unsure about the size of the tax cuts.

Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious

[GeronL]

Without real spending cuts the answer is yes. There will be indirect tax hikes through another round of inflation. We will probably see another round of Quantitative Easing, “devaluation”, which is like a tax.

[mbynack]

Eventually the middle class is going to have to pay for the spending through some sort of “revenue enhancement”. It may not be a direct income tax increases, but they’re going to get the money from us some way. I expect to see increased corporate taxes by reducing tax exemptions. These will get passed on to consumers as price increases.

[92nina]

The inflation threat is a bad one, the solution of ‘developing nations’ to debt. As for getting rid of deductions, we shall see.