Gingrich "2-2-2" plan: A huge payday for the upper class as Treasury hemorrhages more red ink [View all]

[Amerigo Vespucci]

December 13, 2011 12:00 PM
Introducing Newt Gingrich's 2-2-2 Plan

By Jon Perr

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/introducing-newt-gingrichs-2-2-2-plan



If nothing else, former House Speaker and new GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich is all about keeping his options open. After all, Newt has gone through three religions and three wives. As it turns out, when it comes to Medicare, Social Security and the tax code, President Gingrich wants Americans to have options as well. In each case, Gingrich is offering voters a choice between the current system and a new one. With a nod to that other GOP champion of American women, Herman Cain, call it the 2-2-2 Plan. Of course, whatever you name it, the result is the same: Newt Gingrich would deliver yet another massive windfall for the wealthy while draining trillions from the U.S. Treasury.

Gingrich's scheme for a budget-busting payout for the gilded class starts with his tax reform proposal. Like Rick Perry, taxpayers could choose to pay an optional flat tax rate (15 percent in Newt's case, 20 percent in Perry's proposal). The corporate tax rate would be slashed from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. Like, Perry, Gingrich would eliminate the capital gains tax altogether. (As the Washington Post recently explained the impact of the already historically low 15 percent capital gains tax rate, "Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.&quot

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Gingrich preserves deductions for corporations and rich individuals that Perry eliminates: He preserve deductions for charitable giving and mortgage interest to all Americans, whereas Perry only keeps them for families earning less than $500,000. Perry vows to eliminate all corporate tax deductions, while Gingrich would preserve them. As such, corporations and the richest Americans could stand to benefit even more under Gingrich's plan than Perry's.

Under Perry's plan, those with more than a million in income would save $500,000 in taxes by 2015, due to a 60 percent drop in their tax rate, and those benefits would be even bigger under Gingrich. According to the Tax Policy Center, Perry's plan would lower total projected government revenue by 27 percent--a $1 trillion loss in 2015 alone. Gingrich's plan, accordingly, would result in even bigger revenue loss.

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/introducing-newt-gingrichs-2-2-2-plan