When the 1913 income tax became law in the US, the entire tax code was explained in 400 pages. The taxpayer’s return consisted of a simple four page form, one page of which was the instructions.
World War II came and tax code complexity exploded. Special provisions (aka loopholes) exponentiated. The code, which had occupied just 504 pages in 1939, had mutated to 8,200 pages by war’s end in 1945.
To prove that the complexity of the tax code can be quantified by the number of pages it takes to explain this monstrosity, recent researchers used regression analysis showing that since 1945 the number of code pages have grown 3.3% per year exponentially (that is, increasing at an increasing rate rather than a constant rate). The current tax code – are you ready for this? – requires 71,684 pages and 10 million words for the geniuses we’ve elected to explain how to comply with their insatiable demand for cash.
God explained the entire plan of salvation in less than 800,000 words! Tolstoy’s War and Peace – one of the longest novels in print – described Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 560,000 words, and Ayn Rand’s longest novel – Atlas Shrugged – explained the clash of government socialism and a creative society in 645,000 words.
The tax code has been modified and expanded 14,000 times since 1986 – the year of Reagan’s Tax “Reform” Act. Over 500 changes were made just last year. Predictably this has created an industry of compliance and avoidance experts, which the IRS estimates consumes six billion hours annually to complete tax forms – the equivalent of three million jobs that do nothing else. It’s also estimated that compliance costs will soon reach a half trillion dollars annually – money undisputedly better spent creating something of economic value.
It may shock you to learn that there was a time during the Second Age of Middle-earth when the sole purpose of a tax code was to raise the money to run a country’s government. But today's governmental elites have pooh-poohed such a pedestrian purpose and expanded it to redistribute income, discriminate in favor of chosen industries (aka political contributors), and discriminate against certain behaviors and activities – like not driving a fuel-efficient car or installing solar panels on your roof, which our beneficent government otherwise rewards with tax credits for compliance.
It’s pretty easy to multiply your taxable income by a percentage to determine the government’s take. The challenge is determining the amount of your total income that qualifies as “taxable” income. Because of the arcane provisions of the tax code, people are motivated to find ways to minimize their taxable income. Instead of replacing the code and reducing rates, which is the problem, every revision Congress makes to the code adds to what is already there. So in time we have the current crazy quilt of patches with tax rates that most payers think are excessive. Taxpayers simply find new ways to minimize their tax bill – which they should; avoidance is not evasion – and the fox and hound silliness continues while thousands of new pages are added to the tax books.
Arguments have been put forward for a flat tax, a fair tax, and other ideas that would scrap and replace the current code and it multitudinous exemptions, preferences, and special case provisions. I haven’t the space to critique every proposal to replace our Frankensteinian system, but I will comment on one that seems to have caught the public imagination – Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, which has elevated him in the polls.
Cain introduced 9-9-9 with the confidence that, “If 10% is good enough for God, then 9% should be just fine for the Federal Government.” Hard to argue with that. But the devil is in the details. His 9-9-9 plan would drop the current 35% corporate tax rate to 9%, eliminate the six-bracket personal income tax system and replace it with a 9% flat tax, and add a consumption tax in the form of a 9% national sales tax on retail transactions. There would be no personal deductions except charitable contributions.
When it was rolled out, critics howled that the poor would be taxed under 9-9-9, so Cain modified his plan to exempt them from taxes. I happen to believe that everyone should pay taxes – even the poor, albeit at low rates – because when you’ve got skin in the game, you watch the game. With almost half of US households paying no federal tax, too many citizens have no vested interest in a government that costs them nothing. That’s not the way democracy works.
The four questions that a tax plan advocate must answer is: (i) is it simple – easily understood, (ii) is it fair – unfortunately a subjective criterion, (iii) does it raise enough revenue to operate the government, and (iv) can politicians manipulate it?
So, let’s look at Cain’s plan through this screen.
Is it simple?
A simple tax code should not require business and personal taxpayers to spend the time and resources currently required in keeping tax records, filing returns, and hiring experts to navigate the labyrinthine arcana of the current tax code. Arthur Laffer recently editorialized that for every dollar of business and personal income taxes paid, about 30 cents is paid to comply with the tax code. Cain asserts that 9-9-9 will abolish the 30-cent compliance cost without reducing the government’s take.
Is 9-9-9 simpler than the current code? Well, sorta’. Cain’s plan is more complex than 9-9-9 sounds if you read the explanation of it on his web page. The plan, of which 9-9-9 is a part, consists of three stages.
Stage One requires Congress to reduce the top tax rate for individuals and corporations to 25% and eliminate the capital gains tax. Cain believes this will encourage individuals and businesses to repatriate overseas profits and investments and put the money to work on American soil. I say fat chance that a President Cain could make that happen, but hey: let’s keep an open mind.
Stage Two kicks in 9-9-9, abolishing the payroll tax and replacing it with three taxes. Then Stage Three is implemented which would slowly replaces 9-9-9 toward a Fair Tax – essentially a flat tax.
Cain would “simplify” the tax code by eliminating personal deductions, exemptions, and credits except charitable deductions. Businesses would not be able to deduct wages and many expenses that are deductible today, but they would be able to deduct capital purchases rather than depreciate them over years, and they could exempt capital income.
Therefore, Cain’s taxes – on wage income, again at the cash register as a sales tax, and yet again by businesses on their sales less the cost of goods and services – are essentially consumption taxes. Note that wages are essentially taxed three times – first with the 9% flat tax, then again as business profits (since wages aren’t a deduction), then again in the retail sales tax.
I agree with Cain that we should tax consumption – i.e. when people spend money, not when they save money. But a simpler plan than Cain’s would be to tax income and exempt returns on savings, like interest, capital gains, and estates.
Is it fair?
First, we must agree on a definition of fair. Obama thinks it’s unfair that 48% of households pay no federal income taxes and that he can’t get current taxpayers – especially the richest ones – to pay more so he can eliminate even more households from paying taxes.
That less and less should pay more and more stokes the most controversial attribute of the Cain plan. It raises taxes on the middle class and the lower class. The upper class gets a large tax reduction in 9-9-9 and people who pay no taxes or little taxes now will see their share increase to offset those reductions.
For this reason, Cain’s 9-9-9 is too regressive, critics say. And I say the current system is too progressive. A highly progressive tax code essentially caps by government edict what people are allowed to earn. Conceivably the marginal tax rate in the highest bracket could be 100%, meaning the government takes all income (caps it) that falls in that bracket.
Democracies don’t work that way. The government has no business managing the fates of winners and losers. As long as gains aren’t ill-gotten, people shouldn’t be penalized because they are successful. And, I might add, the spending and investing habits of the rich create many jobs that would disappear if there were no rich people.
In my judgment, Cain’s 9-9-9 or any other plan that makes the tax system less progressive regrettably has little chance of becoming law because its argument isn’t economic. It’s ideological.
Does it raise enough revenue to operate the government?
In recent years, the gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged about $14.5 trillion and federal tax revenues have averaged about $2.3 trillion or about 16% of GDP.
Cain’s 9-9-9 would tax personal income, which is about $7.7 trillion, at 9% and raise $693 billion. Business income of $9.5 trillion, taxed at 9%, would raise $855 billion. And finally, retail sales, which have recently averaged $8.3 trillion, would raise $747 billion if taxed at 9%. These three tax revenue streams total to $2.3 trillion, which is the current total of tax receipts in recent years from income, business profits, payroll taxes, capital gains, and estate taxes. The calculations eliminate families living below the poverty line.
Of course a number of critics have come forward with their analyses to show why the Cain plan is not revenue-neutral. However, all analyses regarding revenue-neutrality, including the one I’ve presented, really beg the question. It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Neither Cain’s 9-9-9 nor the current tax system raises enough money to operate the government, which is spending at a rate of $3.6 trillion per years. Historically, government spending has been 20% of the GDP. So when government spends about 25% of the GDP and pays for it with taxes representing 16% to 18% of the GDP, even a politician ought to understand you can’t keep that up. And indeed the historic deficits have piled up into a national debt exceeding $14 trillion – an all time high. Yet, trying to support an extraordinary level of spending by jiggering the tax code to raise more money will make us less and less able to raise enough money to operate the government. It already has. Obama wants to increase tax receipts, which will make the US even less viable economically than it is now. Money is only economically productive when it’s in the hands of the private sector – not the hands of the government.
But even that is not always true. There is over $1.5 trillion in private capital sitting on the sideline instead of engaged in productive pursuits because of the economic uncertainties caused by our current level of spending. Cain’s 9-9-9 plan doesn’t address that issue. And until it does, disputes over whether his plan is revenue-neutral with the current tax code are irrelevant. It’s the wrong problem.
Can politicians manipulate it?
The “9” that will find the least support even among conservative supporters of Cain is the one devoted to the sales tax. No one will ever go wrong by mistrusting a politician – even kith and kin. Some are corrupted, but all are corruptible.
If we have a healthy distrust of politicians, then putting a national sales tax in their hands is like putting a loaded gun in a child’s hands. It’s hard to imagine that 9-9-9 could remain fixed until the Lord returns. More probably, 9-9-9 would become 10-10-10 and before long, 15-15-15 or more.
Cain has tried to prevent this by suggesting the repeal of the 16th Amendment – something that would take longer than a two-term president’s tenure – to eliminate the legality of the income tax. He has also proposed that as President, he would get Congress to freeze 9-9-9 and require a two-thirds vote to increase rates in the future. Lots of luck. Congresses have been increasing rates since the Revolution, and it’s probably unconstitutional for a Congress to bind a future Congress.
One of the worst negatives of Cain’s national sales tax is that it opens the door to a Value-added Tax. Pelosi suggested a VAT to pay for ObamaCare but knew she had no chance of passing it into law. Especially popular in Europe, every country which conned its citizens to support a VAT as a way to bring down national debt learned the hard way that quickly becomes a new tax blooming atop the old tax structure with the original VAT rate increased.
Americans should remember all of the surprises that were hidden by the writers of the ObamaCare law. Hardly a week passes without a new hidden provision coming to the surface. Therefore, try to say with a straight face: “It is unlikely that a politician would slip in verbiage in a future bill adding a wholesale tax to the retail tax – thus converting Cain’s sales tax to a VAT.”
Politicians say they want a tax system that is fair and simple. But fairness and simplicity are mutually exclusive most of the time. Fairness requires a tax code with Solomonic exceptions and special provisions. Government wants to incent home ownership so it makes mortgage interest deductible, but it excludes mortgage interest that provides too much of a deduction – jumbo mortgages. Government wants to incent charitable giving so it makes it deductible, but if you give goods or services instead of cash all sorts of qualifiers have to be written into the regulations. With each of these “fairness” provisions, the code becomes more complex. Strike them in the interest of simplicity and the code becomes less fair.
Three weeks ago, on October 22, the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act passed without fanfare. How well I remember the Gipper hitting the airwaves to argue that if we taxpayers would give up our tax shelters and loopholes (which were little more than legislated work-arounds to offset onerous tax rates), he would lower taxes and rates would remain unchanged in the future. That was Reagan’s quid pro quo.
The highest tax bracket was lowered from 50% to 28%. The lowest bracket was increased from 11% to 15%. Capital gains were thereafter taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. The number of tax brackets was consolidated to make them simpler. Since Lincoln’s Civil War Revenue Act of 1862, this was the only time that the top rates were lowered and the bottom rates were increased, thus broadening the tax base, which I thought was fair. With skin in the game you watch the game.
The next day, the Wall Street Journal published this commentary:
Yesterday, shortly after 11 a.m., Ronald Reagan signed HR 3838, the landmark tax-reform bill of 1986. The battle to get tax reform is over; the battle to keep it is just beginning.
Mr. Reagan recognized this in his statement at the signing ceremony, pledging to stop rate increases, and laying out a remarkably thoughtful explanation of the principles behind the movement to cut tax rates. Enjoy it while you can. Congress will be back on Jan. 6 and the movement to take away tax reform will start.
And start it did. Since 1986 Congress, which would not again raise taxes if only we taxpayers would give up some of our deductions, has raised taxes. George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, failed to win reelection because he broke his “No new taxes” pledge to the American people. Good riddance. Many of the “loopholes” abolished 25 years ago are back.
Until American voters pay attention to what goes on in Congress and punish those who spend and tax too much, we will be stuck with a system that no one comprehends and whose primary beneficiaries are the clients of Gucci-shod K Street lobbyists.
Cain is right that we need to fundamentally change our tax system. But will 9-9-9 accomplish it? Nein!
World War II came and tax code complexity exploded. Special provisions (aka loopholes) exponentiated. The code, which had occupied just 504 pages in 1939, had mutated to 8,200 pages by war’s end in 1945.
To prove that the complexity of the tax code can be quantified by the number of pages it takes to explain this monstrosity, recent researchers used regression analysis showing that since 1945 the number of code pages have grown 3.3% per year exponentially (that is, increasing at an increasing rate rather than a constant rate). The current tax code – are you ready for this? – requires 71,684 pages and 10 million words for the geniuses we’ve elected to explain how to comply with their insatiable demand for cash.
God explained the entire plan of salvation in less than 800,000 words! Tolstoy’s War and Peace – one of the longest novels in print – described Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 560,000 words, and Ayn Rand’s longest novel – Atlas Shrugged – explained the clash of government socialism and a creative society in 645,000 words.
The tax code has been modified and expanded 14,000 times since 1986 – the year of Reagan’s Tax “Reform” Act. Over 500 changes were made just last year. Predictably this has created an industry of compliance and avoidance experts, which the IRS estimates consumes six billion hours annually to complete tax forms – the equivalent of three million jobs that do nothing else. It’s also estimated that compliance costs will soon reach a half trillion dollars annually – money undisputedly better spent creating something of economic value.
It may shock you to learn that there was a time during the Second Age of Middle-earth when the sole purpose of a tax code was to raise the money to run a country’s government. But today's governmental elites have pooh-poohed such a pedestrian purpose and expanded it to redistribute income, discriminate in favor of chosen industries (aka political contributors), and discriminate against certain behaviors and activities – like not driving a fuel-efficient car or installing solar panels on your roof, which our beneficent government otherwise rewards with tax credits for compliance.
It’s pretty easy to multiply your taxable income by a percentage to determine the government’s take. The challenge is determining the amount of your total income that qualifies as “taxable” income. Because of the arcane provisions of the tax code, people are motivated to find ways to minimize their taxable income. Instead of replacing the code and reducing rates, which is the problem, every revision Congress makes to the code adds to what is already there. So in time we have the current crazy quilt of patches with tax rates that most payers think are excessive. Taxpayers simply find new ways to minimize their tax bill – which they should; avoidance is not evasion – and the fox and hound silliness continues while thousands of new pages are added to the tax books.
Arguments have been put forward for a flat tax, a fair tax, and other ideas that would scrap and replace the current code and it multitudinous exemptions, preferences, and special case provisions. I haven’t the space to critique every proposal to replace our Frankensteinian system, but I will comment on one that seems to have caught the public imagination – Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, which has elevated him in the polls.
Cain introduced 9-9-9 with the confidence that, “If 10% is good enough for God, then 9% should be just fine for the Federal Government.” Hard to argue with that. But the devil is in the details. His 9-9-9 plan would drop the current 35% corporate tax rate to 9%, eliminate the six-bracket personal income tax system and replace it with a 9% flat tax, and add a consumption tax in the form of a 9% national sales tax on retail transactions. There would be no personal deductions except charitable contributions.
When it was rolled out, critics howled that the poor would be taxed under 9-9-9, so Cain modified his plan to exempt them from taxes. I happen to believe that everyone should pay taxes – even the poor, albeit at low rates – because when you’ve got skin in the game, you watch the game. With almost half of US households paying no federal tax, too many citizens have no vested interest in a government that costs them nothing. That’s not the way democracy works.
The four questions that a tax plan advocate must answer is: (i) is it simple – easily understood, (ii) is it fair – unfortunately a subjective criterion, (iii) does it raise enough revenue to operate the government, and (iv) can politicians manipulate it?
So, let’s look at Cain’s plan through this screen.
Is it simple?
A simple tax code should not require business and personal taxpayers to spend the time and resources currently required in keeping tax records, filing returns, and hiring experts to navigate the labyrinthine arcana of the current tax code. Arthur Laffer recently editorialized that for every dollar of business and personal income taxes paid, about 30 cents is paid to comply with the tax code. Cain asserts that 9-9-9 will abolish the 30-cent compliance cost without reducing the government’s take.
Is 9-9-9 simpler than the current code? Well, sorta’. Cain’s plan is more complex than 9-9-9 sounds if you read the explanation of it on his web page. The plan, of which 9-9-9 is a part, consists of three stages.
Stage One requires Congress to reduce the top tax rate for individuals and corporations to 25% and eliminate the capital gains tax. Cain believes this will encourage individuals and businesses to repatriate overseas profits and investments and put the money to work on American soil. I say fat chance that a President Cain could make that happen, but hey: let’s keep an open mind.
Stage Two kicks in 9-9-9, abolishing the payroll tax and replacing it with three taxes. Then Stage Three is implemented which would slowly replaces 9-9-9 toward a Fair Tax – essentially a flat tax.
Cain would “simplify” the tax code by eliminating personal deductions, exemptions, and credits except charitable deductions. Businesses would not be able to deduct wages and many expenses that are deductible today, but they would be able to deduct capital purchases rather than depreciate them over years, and they could exempt capital income.
Therefore, Cain’s taxes – on wage income, again at the cash register as a sales tax, and yet again by businesses on their sales less the cost of goods and services – are essentially consumption taxes. Note that wages are essentially taxed three times – first with the 9% flat tax, then again as business profits (since wages aren’t a deduction), then again in the retail sales tax.
I agree with Cain that we should tax consumption – i.e. when people spend money, not when they save money. But a simpler plan than Cain’s would be to tax income and exempt returns on savings, like interest, capital gains, and estates.
Is it fair?
First, we must agree on a definition of fair. Obama thinks it’s unfair that 48% of households pay no federal income taxes and that he can’t get current taxpayers – especially the richest ones – to pay more so he can eliminate even more households from paying taxes.
That less and less should pay more and more stokes the most controversial attribute of the Cain plan. It raises taxes on the middle class and the lower class. The upper class gets a large tax reduction in 9-9-9 and people who pay no taxes or little taxes now will see their share increase to offset those reductions.
For this reason, Cain’s 9-9-9 is too regressive, critics say. And I say the current system is too progressive. A highly progressive tax code essentially caps by government edict what people are allowed to earn. Conceivably the marginal tax rate in the highest bracket could be 100%, meaning the government takes all income (caps it) that falls in that bracket.
Democracies don’t work that way. The government has no business managing the fates of winners and losers. As long as gains aren’t ill-gotten, people shouldn’t be penalized because they are successful. And, I might add, the spending and investing habits of the rich create many jobs that would disappear if there were no rich people.
In my judgment, Cain’s 9-9-9 or any other plan that makes the tax system less progressive regrettably has little chance of becoming law because its argument isn’t economic. It’s ideological.
Does it raise enough revenue to operate the government?
In recent years, the gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged about $14.5 trillion and federal tax revenues have averaged about $2.3 trillion or about 16% of GDP.
Cain’s 9-9-9 would tax personal income, which is about $7.7 trillion, at 9% and raise $693 billion. Business income of $9.5 trillion, taxed at 9%, would raise $855 billion. And finally, retail sales, which have recently averaged $8.3 trillion, would raise $747 billion if taxed at 9%. These three tax revenue streams total to $2.3 trillion, which is the current total of tax receipts in recent years from income, business profits, payroll taxes, capital gains, and estate taxes. The calculations eliminate families living below the poverty line.
Of course a number of critics have come forward with their analyses to show why the Cain plan is not revenue-neutral. However, all analyses regarding revenue-neutrality, including the one I’ve presented, really beg the question. It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Neither Cain’s 9-9-9 nor the current tax system raises enough money to operate the government, which is spending at a rate of $3.6 trillion per years. Historically, government spending has been 20% of the GDP. So when government spends about 25% of the GDP and pays for it with taxes representing 16% to 18% of the GDP, even a politician ought to understand you can’t keep that up. And indeed the historic deficits have piled up into a national debt exceeding $14 trillion – an all time high. Yet, trying to support an extraordinary level of spending by jiggering the tax code to raise more money will make us less and less able to raise enough money to operate the government. It already has. Obama wants to increase tax receipts, which will make the US even less viable economically than it is now. Money is only economically productive when it’s in the hands of the private sector – not the hands of the government.
But even that is not always true. There is over $1.5 trillion in private capital sitting on the sideline instead of engaged in productive pursuits because of the economic uncertainties caused by our current level of spending. Cain’s 9-9-9 plan doesn’t address that issue. And until it does, disputes over whether his plan is revenue-neutral with the current tax code are irrelevant. It’s the wrong problem.
Can politicians manipulate it?
The “9” that will find the least support even among conservative supporters of Cain is the one devoted to the sales tax. No one will ever go wrong by mistrusting a politician – even kith and kin. Some are corrupted, but all are corruptible.
If we have a healthy distrust of politicians, then putting a national sales tax in their hands is like putting a loaded gun in a child’s hands. It’s hard to imagine that 9-9-9 could remain fixed until the Lord returns. More probably, 9-9-9 would become 10-10-10 and before long, 15-15-15 or more.
Cain has tried to prevent this by suggesting the repeal of the 16th Amendment – something that would take longer than a two-term president’s tenure – to eliminate the legality of the income tax. He has also proposed that as President, he would get Congress to freeze 9-9-9 and require a two-thirds vote to increase rates in the future. Lots of luck. Congresses have been increasing rates since the Revolution, and it’s probably unconstitutional for a Congress to bind a future Congress.
One of the worst negatives of Cain’s national sales tax is that it opens the door to a Value-added Tax. Pelosi suggested a VAT to pay for ObamaCare but knew she had no chance of passing it into law. Especially popular in Europe, every country which conned its citizens to support a VAT as a way to bring down national debt learned the hard way that quickly becomes a new tax blooming atop the old tax structure with the original VAT rate increased.
Americans should remember all of the surprises that were hidden by the writers of the ObamaCare law. Hardly a week passes without a new hidden provision coming to the surface. Therefore, try to say with a straight face: “It is unlikely that a politician would slip in verbiage in a future bill adding a wholesale tax to the retail tax – thus converting Cain’s sales tax to a VAT.”
Politicians say they want a tax system that is fair and simple. But fairness and simplicity are mutually exclusive most of the time. Fairness requires a tax code with Solomonic exceptions and special provisions. Government wants to incent home ownership so it makes mortgage interest deductible, but it excludes mortgage interest that provides too much of a deduction – jumbo mortgages. Government wants to incent charitable giving so it makes it deductible, but if you give goods or services instead of cash all sorts of qualifiers have to be written into the regulations. With each of these “fairness” provisions, the code becomes more complex. Strike them in the interest of simplicity and the code becomes less fair.
Three weeks ago, on October 22, the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act passed without fanfare. How well I remember the Gipper hitting the airwaves to argue that if we taxpayers would give up our tax shelters and loopholes (which were little more than legislated work-arounds to offset onerous tax rates), he would lower taxes and rates would remain unchanged in the future. That was Reagan’s quid pro quo.
The highest tax bracket was lowered from 50% to 28%. The lowest bracket was increased from 11% to 15%. Capital gains were thereafter taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. The number of tax brackets was consolidated to make them simpler. Since Lincoln’s Civil War Revenue Act of 1862, this was the only time that the top rates were lowered and the bottom rates were increased, thus broadening the tax base, which I thought was fair. With skin in the game you watch the game.
The next day, the Wall Street Journal published this commentary:
Yesterday, shortly after 11 a.m., Ronald Reagan signed HR 3838, the landmark tax-reform bill of 1986. The battle to get tax reform is over; the battle to keep it is just beginning.
Mr. Reagan recognized this in his statement at the signing ceremony, pledging to stop rate increases, and laying out a remarkably thoughtful explanation of the principles behind the movement to cut tax rates. Enjoy it while you can. Congress will be back on Jan. 6 and the movement to take away tax reform will start.
And start it did. Since 1986 Congress, which would not again raise taxes if only we taxpayers would give up some of our deductions, has raised taxes. George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, failed to win reelection because he broke his “No new taxes” pledge to the American people. Good riddance. Many of the “loopholes” abolished 25 years ago are back.
Until American voters pay attention to what goes on in Congress and punish those who spend and tax too much, we will be stuck with a system that no one comprehends and whose primary beneficiaries are the clients of Gucci-shod K Street lobbyists.
Cain is right that we need to fundamentally change our tax system. But will 9-9-9 accomplish it? Nein!
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