Trust Us!We Know What Is Best For

Everyone!They Do Not!

Edward J. Dodson, M.L.A.November, 2011

Republican Presidential CandidatesAnd Their

Economic Advisers

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney

"...the President’s failure to address the looming deficits, national debt, unfunded entitlement liabilities, ballooning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae liabilities, and incalculable government pension obligations causes employers and investors to ask whether the dollar will be worth very much in the future, and thus, they hold back."

N. Gregory Mankiw

N. Gregory Mankiw

“Ideally, I would use consumption, rather than income, as the tax base for purposes of raising revenue and redistribution. The benefit of consumption taxes over income taxes is that they do not distort the intertemporal allocation of consumption.”

R. Glenn Hubbard

“[T]he mass refinancing of mortgages … would be a big positive effect not only on the housing market but on the economy as a whole. Given that it would be over the life of the mortgage, it would be the equivalent of a long-term tax cut. … and you would lower defaults …  Others have suggested doing this on the asset side through principal writedowns, but that takes a lot of time and really would make me worry about contracts. … Mass refinancing is just basically allowing refinancing that would have happened in normal times anyway.”

Ron Paul

Peter Schiff

“We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."

“At the scale he’s talking about, it’s unlikely you could have an immediate reduction in government without hurtling the economy into recession. …I think that you could achieve his long-run objectives with less short-run disruptions.”

Michele Bachmann

“In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan enacted a tax reform that that created a period of unparalleled prosperity. …In my plan, I intend to increase our competitiveness by following Reagan’s blueprint for tax reform, which had as its core principle stop taxing investment and productivity. …It needs to be graduated. We’ve had a progressive system of taxation. We can have a flattened system within that progression.”

Michele Bachmann

“[The holiday] didn’t accomplish its stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the U.S.”

Kristin Forbes

Herman Cain

“… across-the-board tax cuts to provide long-term relief, including reducing the capital gains tax, suspending taxes on repatriated profits and permanently eliminating the Death Tax.”

Richard Lowrie, Jr.

Newt Gingrich

“I won't need to rely on Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers for counsel when I am president. The best economic advisor I'll have is me."

Rick Perry

David Malpass

“With the deterioration in the U.S. economy the rich-versus-poor income disparity has become a rallying cry for dissent, with bigger government the goal. …The policy issue is whether our goal as a society should be higher incomes for all or less disparity between incomes--countries almost never achieve both. Today's anger shouldn't indict income disparity but rather the failure of our current policies to allow broad income growth.”

Steve Forbes

“It’s the best tax proposal since Ronald Reagan’s tax proposal in his 1980 campaign.”

Steve Forbes

“Most states now have an average of eight or nine percent sales tax. You add nine percent national sales tax, that means 18 percent on stuff you buy. That’s just a tough sell politically.”

Jon Huntsman

“We’re going to lower rates with three brackets and an income tax return that would resemble a post card. …You pay for it by eliminating corporate welfare, by phasing out subsidies and loopholes and deductions. My goal would be to phase out everything on the corporate side and the individual side.”

John Mack

Rick Santorum

• Cutting the corporate tax rate in half.

• Reducing the tax rate to zero for all manufacturers. Permanently extending the Bush tax cuts rates for Capital Gains and Dividend Tax rates.

• Repeal of what he describes as “the Death Tax.”

•Repatriating taxable income outside the United States at a rate of 5%; and,

• Reducing the complexity of the tax code for all by making the system flatter, fairer, and simpler

“…we have lost a lot of good-paying jobs that supported families that allowed for upward mobility. I think that's one of the things that -- that people are saying. …And that's where manufacturing comes in. And we need to make things in America. …And what I've proposed is to take the corporate tax, which is 35 percent on manufacturers, and cut that to zero. Eliminate the corporate tax if you manufacture and process here in this country. That will bring a lot of those jobs back.”

Barach Obama

“In terms of my track record on the economy – well, here’s just a simple way of thinking about it,” Obama calmly responded. “When I came into office, the U.S. economy had contracted by 9 percent -- the largest contraction since the Great Depression. Little over a year later, the economy was growing by 4 percent, and it's been growing ever since.”

Alan B. Krueger, Chairman,Council of Economic Advisers

“Efforts to spur short-run consumption can worsen the long-run problems by increasing the government budget deficit and depleting personal savings. Here is a suggestion to address both the short-run and long-run problems. I pose it only as a suggestion for serious discussion; I’m not sure it is the best way to go. But here goes: Why not pass a 5 percent consumption tax to take effect two years from now? …”

“The main downside of this proposal is that taxes reduce economic activity. But the government must make critical trade-offs, and a consumption tax could be the most efficient means to raise revenue to finance essential government functions. Over time, if the budget picture improved, income taxes or corporate taxes could be reduced and the revenue replaced by the consumption tax. …”

“Another downside is that a consumption tax is a greater burden for the poor, who spend a relatively high share of their income. But this can be compensated by exempting essential items, like rent and nutrition, or by providing a rebate to low-income households.”

Timothy Geithner

“What everybody agrees on is, we should extend what we call the middle-class tax cuts. But they also go to about 97% of small businesses. And if we were to move and Congress were to act now on those fronts, that would provide a lot of certainty. We've also proposed making sure that we keep the top rate on dividends, the capital gains, from rising beyond 20%.”

Timothy Geithner

“[W]hat the president's program did, alongside what the Federal Reserve did, is bring a measure of stability to house prices much more quickly than people thought. …[P]eople thought they might fall another 30%. And what happened is they stabilized because we were able to bring mortgage interest rates down to very low levels, and that helped slow the pace of erosion. House prices have been reasonably stable for more than a year. Mortgage interest rates are very low. Housing is much more affordable than it's been in a really long time.”

Unfinished Business: Cutting Payroll Taxes

Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers

"the parties to these kinds of contract are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies."

Robert Reich

The Truth About the Economy