MGB:_Just to be clear, Catholic Social Teaching demands a just wage for families. When a child is added, enough income must be added through the public and private sector to fully fund that child’s needs at an acceptable middle class lifestyle. The current tax law does not do that and the proposed reform helps little, if at all. Shfiting the child exemption to a credit is helpful, but it needs to be a refundable credit. $1600 is progress, but it should be $1000 per month per child. The current system is an F and the proposal does improve it. Getting rid of TANF, SNAP and even some housing subsidies would be fine so long as they were replaced by cash. Replacing the mortgage interest and property tax deductions with an improved Child Tax Credit would actually get us close to adequacy. The bill takes away some of the MID, but it sends it to business owners and the Executive Class. Epic fail.
I will argue that the 1986 reform cut loopholes and lowered rates. It laid the caused the recession under Bush and set up the Great Recession under his son by letting people use their homes as ATMs, which started the push to higher housing prices as appraisers agree with whomever is paying them. At least the bill takes away the mortgage ATM provisions, but that is likely an invitiation to give members a contribution to strike that reform. Sadly, few advocate a bigger CTC, even if it would help their industry or reduce abortions. Cardinal DiNardo, call your office.
The key feature is giving money to job creators. When you do that, you get tacky billionaires putting gold on the walls of their midtown Manhatten apartments, truly bringing back the guilded age. This is no incentive to industrial jobs. Indeed, jobs are cut because the government is giving owners and CEOs a lower penalty for saving labor costs and pocketing the difference in dividends and bonuses. Make the tax 70% again there is no such incentive because the government takes those savings. Cutting estate taxes is also a distraction. If you really fear that estate tax will erode business infrastructure, stop taxing estates, but instead tax the proceeds of sold assets as normal income to heirs. You will catch a lot more fish, even with a standard deduction of $100,000 for joint filers.
This leads to what is missing. While they seem regressivie, consumption taxes are better than payroll taxes and lower wage income taxes because they tax profit and wages equally and allow tax benefits to families to be distributed through wages as an offset to consumption tax collected. They are the money machine that makes European style social democracy possible, from real health care to family subsidies. The GOP will not even consider them. This goes way beyond prudential judgement to economic immorality. You simply cannot vote for this party. As an issue, abortion is about allowing rather than imposing. The GOP economic plan is imposing a corrupt system and it encourages abortion because it leaves many with only the option of killing the additional child. Again, DiNardo, call your office.
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