THE REPUBLICANS' CAIN MUTINY

by H. N. Burdett

"For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." H. L. Mencken

When your competitor or opponent in business or across the chess board or tennis net is self-destructing, the wisest counsel is to not get in the way. The same logic applies to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's too dangerous to be considered goofy 9-9-9 tax plan.

Democrats do not have to waste their time or breath on denouncing the former Godfather Pizza CEO's astoundingly regressive notion of tax reform. Other GOP presidential hopefuls are doing the job quite well, thank you very much.

First in line was Jon Huntsman. In the recent debate on economic policy between the eight aspirants for the GOP nomination, the former Utah governor and U.S. Ambassador to China said he thought 9-9-9 was something that appears on a pizza box. Huntsman's evaluation gets my vote for the best intentionally humorous line of the debate cycle (which is short-changing the viewing audience in that respect) to be uttered thus far.

Michele Bachmann, no stranger to looking at the world upside down, noted that from her vantage point Cain's tax proposal translates into the satanic 6-6-6. Everyone understands that Mrs. Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry have been lured into the race for the White House by a Higher Authority. But who knew that personable Cain, the self-made business executive, motivational speaker, tea party favorite and current darling of rank-and-file Republicans who shot up in the polls with rocket thrust, was sent to us by the nether world?

Credited with elevating Cain from an expected early primary campaign dropout into an overnight serious contender, his brainstorm calls for what on the surface seems to be simplicity itself: a 9 percent tax rate on personal income, 9 percent on businesses and a 9 percent federal sales tax.

Political back and forth aside, Bruce Bartlett, former U.S. Treasury official and economic adviser to Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as well as Texas congressman and current presidential nomination candidate Ron Paul and former New York Rep. Jack Kemp, has examined the 9-9-9 travesty more closely. And he has found it to be a nightmare.

"At a minimum, the Cain plan is a distribution monstrosity," Bartlett posited. "The poor would pay more, while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase. Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain's tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill-conceived."

As an example, the 9 percent rate would apply to personal gross income with deductions only for charitable donations, and no mention of personal exemptions. Thus, those who now pay no federal income taxes - 47 percent of all taxpayers - would now pay 9 percent of their total income. The earned income credit would be eliminated, offsetting both their income tax liability and their payroll payment.

Crafted by a Cleveland accountant rather than egghead economists, Cain's plan would have everyone pay a 9 percent sales tax on all purchases - food, rent, health care, automobiles, even pizzas. No exemptions. The result would increase the cost of living by 9 percent, Bartlett reminds us.

The appeal of the 9-9-9 formula is that at first blush it seems so eminently fair: everyone pays the same rate. But just as simplistic campaign rhetoric has been in the past and will be in the future, the devil - and I categorically refute the innuendo that the affable Mr. Cain was coaxed into this race by the prince of darkness - is in the details.

When the smoke has cleared, and the flat-tax scuttled or at very least revised, there is something quite wonderful about the prospect, unlikely as it may be, of two African Americans squaring off next November for the highest office in the land - 144 years after the passage of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution that recognized persons of color as human beings rather than property. Only a dyed-in-the-wool bigot could fail to appreciate the delicious irony.

Such a face-off could well be the tipping point that will lead Americans to once and for all judge fellow citizens as individuals rather than by the color of their skin. The ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. would be delighted.
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