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Real revolution of George W. Bush
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Issue
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Aug 05, 2003 07:11pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | TV News - CNN |
| News Date | Tuesday, August 5, 2003 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- By early 1996, Malcolm "Steve" Forbes, the charismatically challenged heir to his family's publishing fortune, had used his 16 percent flat tax plan (which excluded interest and dividend income from taxation) to become a serious challenger for that year's Republican presidential nomination.
Forbes' rival and Texas senator, Phil Gramm, who had campaigned as the most conservative Republican in the race and whose mix of twang and drawl possibly made him the nation's first non-English-speaking White House contender, blasted the Forbes' flat tax: "It's not fair to say that people who work with their head or with their hands ought to pay taxes, but people who earn their living with their capital ought not to."
Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary after charging that Forbes' plan to exclude from taxation interest and dividends must have been crafted "by the boys at the yacht basin" and that, if enacted, would "let some trust-fund baby in Florida clip coupons the rest of his life and pay zero taxes."
Beneath the wise-cracks was a serious debate then among Republican candidates over whether earned income -- wages and salary from work -- ought to be taxed at a higher rate than unearned income -- from sources such as stocks or investments.
President George W. Bush has now ended that debate -- in Forbes' favor -- by his successful crusade to effectively reduce the dividend income tax rate for high-income individuals from 39.6 percent under Bill Clinton to 15 percent and the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 15 percent.
Unearned income -- whether from an inherited fortune or from stock market shrewdness -- is prized more and consequently is to be taxed less than the hourly wages and weekly salary of the family of the firefighter, the nurse, the waitress or the teacher -- all of whom pay taxes on their income at a rate of up to 25 percent. |
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