Congratulations, Marco Rubio. Rather than pleasing anyone, you managed to offend just about everyone with your shiny new tax plan. Glenn Beck thinks it’d be better to vote for Barack Obama.
Economists and blowhards on the left, center, and right are all singing kumbaya and writing off Rubio’s plan for making laughable assumptions about tax revenues. Or is it the child tax credit that actually excludes poor families? Maybe it’s that his tax cuts didn’t go far enough?
It’s tough keeping track of the endless criticisms, but here’s a sampling of what’s wrong with Marco Rubio’s tax plan:
Washington Post: “Marco Rubio’s toughest political opponent may be math… Besides, it’s bad politics to make the trade-off between more tax cuts for the rich and less spending for the poor more explicit. That would make a lot of voters think the Republicans don’t care about people like them, which Rubio doesn’t want to doom the party in 2016 like it did in 2012.”
Bloomberg: “Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio defended his tax proposal Wednesday, responding to Democratic critiques that it would increase the budget deficit and Republican complaints that it doesn’t cut rates enough.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial: “His recently announced tax-reform plan, introduced with Utah’s Senator Mike Lee, reflects the tensions inside the GOP. It proposes dropping the corporate rate to 25%, a consensus figure… It’s not clear how Candidate Rubio would hope to win a tax-credit bidding war with Hillary Clinton, who’d see and raise on the size of the credit and make it refundable to non-taxpayers. The Rubio tax credit looks like an obvious political gambit with no economic growth payoff.”
New York Times: “It’s better to describe the Rubio-Lee proposal as the Puppies and Rainbows Tax Plan. After all, it’s full of things everybody likes, at least on the Republican side: family tax cuts that will make it easier to buy the children a puppy, and capital tax cuts that chase a pot of capital investment gold at the end of the rainbow. The main problem is that both puppies and rainbows are expensive.”
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: The plan “creates something that’s even more tilted — outrageously so — in favor of the country’s highest-income people and likely much more fiscally irresponsible. And, like last year’s plan, it not only excludes most working-poor families from its new child tax credit but allows much of their existing child credit to disappear after 2017.”
Larry Kudlow, Conservative Economist: “The personal side of it is a mess and will be politically and economically indefensible and he is going to take tremendous criticism for it and my guess is he will have to back off it very fast.”
Washington Post: “If he wins his party’s nomination, though, Rubio will have to defend a tax plan that, while said to address the challenges of the middle class, includes a huge break that all-but bypasses the middle and greatly boosts the rich. It was a tax plan that was even too large for Romney himself to run on.”
Forbes: “By raising taxes on many small businesses (pass through income would be taxed at a flat 25%) and eliminating investment taxes, it would tilt the playing field in favor of the holders of capital over wage earners. Furthermore, it isn’t intended to be revenue neutral.”
Glenn Beck: “Glenn Beck on Tuesday said the tax reform plan proposed by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is ‘bizarre’ and an ‘absolute jobs killer.’ Rubio announced he will be running for president in 2016, and Beck said his tax plan is so bad, Americans may as well ‘just vote for Barack Obama again.’”
Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation: “The plan pits groups against one another in a way that across-the-board cuts do not. Couples with several children who live in low-tax states with lower-cost housing are entitled to breaks. Couples who live in high-tax states and are childless are not. Businesses enjoy lower rates than wage earners.”
TownHall: “That’s why Senator Rubio’s recent rollout of his tax plan with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) was such a disappointment. More than they’d like to admit, what they’re proposing would amount to a major tax increase for many Americans…Added all together, there’s little to recommend about Marco Rubio’s tax plan. Billed as something that will reduce the burden of government while increasing fairness before the law, a look inside Rubio-Lee reveals quite the opposite. In the end Rubio’s tax plan has nothing to do with economic growth, and because it doesn’t, his candidacy is imperiled. Rubio is promising stagnation when primary voters seek growth. He’s selling what voters aren’t buying.”
New Republic Headline: “Marco Rubio and Mike Lee Want You to Have Kids—Unless You’re Poor”
Published: Apr 17, 2015