An extraordinary exchange on health care costs....
This biographical article on Cain has useful detail. Here is the Herman Cain 2012 webpage. His 9-9-9 tax plan is getting the most attention. This is Cain's own summary of his two-phase plan:
Phase 1 - 9-9-9
Current circumstances call for bolder action.
The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan incorporates the features of Phase One and gets us a step closer to Phase two.
I call on the Super Committee to pass the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan along with their spending cut package.
The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan unites Flat Tax supporters with Fair tax supporters.
Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
Zero capital gains tax
Ends the Death Tax.
Eliminates double taxation of dividends
Business Flat Tax – 9%
Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
Gross income less charitable deductions.
Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
National Sales Tax – 9%.
This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.
Phase 2 – The Fair Tax
Amidst a backdrop of the economic boom created by the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan, I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.
The Fair Tax would ultimately replace individual and corporate income taxes.
It would make it possible to end the IRS as we know it.
The Fair Tax makes our exported goods and services the most competitively internationally than any other tax system.
Phase 1 Enhanced Plan – Summary
Unites all tax payers so we all pay income taxes and no one pays payroll taxes
Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc.
Is fair, neutral, transparent, and efficient
Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
Ends all payroll taxes
Ends the Death Tax
Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
Lowest marginal rates on production
Allows immediate expensing of business investments
Eliminates double taxation of dividends
Increases capital formation. Capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
Capital formation will aid capital availability for small businesses
Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to revitalize our inner cities
We all know the Fed has tripled the money supply since 2008. They have been printing money out of thin air to finance the Obama spending machine. While true Fed reform that restores sound money may have to wait for my election, the best thing we can do now is to pursue policies that increase the DEMAND for dollars to help mitigate the risks associated with the increase in the supply.
Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy
On the whole 9-9-9 is impressive. It is, first & foremost, squarely within the "KISS" rule: "Keep it simple, stupid!" Cain, who is the polar opposite of stupid--he has degrees in mathematics & computer science--knows that a tax plan must be understandable to voters to make the sale.
But 9-9-9 has what is for conservatives an Achilles' Heel: It includes in Phase I a 9 percent sales tax, which in Phase II, as business & individual taxes are phased out, becomes the exclusive tax. The danger is that consumption taxes--hated by liberals for being regressive, falling equally upon rich & poor alike--lack transparency. It is possible to impose taxes on earlier stages of production, converting a simple sales tax into a Value-Added Tax (VAT). Conservatives shudder at what Democrats would do with this tool, now denied them, to raise taxes with virtual impunity, as happens across Europe. Unless Cain addresses these concerns credibly, not easy to do, the appeal of 9-9-9 will fade.
Here is Cain's Wiki bio. Notably, it adds an impressive credential Cain curiously omits from his website bio: Cain was a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992, serving as chairman from January 1995 to August 1996.
Dan Henninger recently wrote that he, for one, is taking Herman Cain seriouusly. He recounts Cain's highly successful business career, and then makes the case for Cain as a possible President:
Does a résumé like Herman Cain's add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we've fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I'm rewriting my presidential-selection software.
Conventional wisdom holds that this week's Chris Christie boomlet means the GOP is desperate for a savior. The reality is that, at some point, Republicans will have to start drilling deeper on their own into the candidates they've got.
Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain's life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.
Herman Cain is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.
Historically, business executives have been challenged when entering senior government positions, because they face employees who do not necessarily march to the tune from the top. Career bureaucrats, who enjoy civil service protection from being fired without legally established good cause--a process that typically takes one or two years--know that they will be around long after the present administration departs. Further, most government careerists are Democrats, and thus even harder to control in a Republican administration.
Cain's substantive knowledge of foreign policy is minimal, but so is that of Rick Perry and, to say the least, The One in the Oval Office today. (Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are both knowledgeable, as is Newt Gingrich.) Put simply, Presidents learn much foreign policy on the job, unless they have prepared with a brain trust apprenticeship, as did Ronald Reagan. In what Henninger calls today's "American Idol" selection process such advance preparation is increasingly rare.
The Presidency is not generally regarded as an entry-level political job, but in a year when public trust in government is at an all-time low, and with the country in the worst economic crisis in two generations non-traditional candidates deserve a look.
George Will thinks Cain is "strolling" for the nomination, without an infrastructure.
Bottom Line. Cain wins, but Clinton shows serious policy chops, and loses only because no generalist pol can match the particularized knowledge of a top-drawer businessman as to conditions in a given industry. But as a Presidential candidate Cain has serious issue knowledge gaps, and will almost surely NOT win the nomination.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Economy, Conservaitve Politics
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