Talk Elections

I'm wondering if this has galvanized people in any direction.  Personally, it makes me much, much less likely to vote for Cain in the upcoming California primary. 

Not that I would have voted for him anyway, but the sheer idiocy of his plan shows what a joke of a candidate he is.

I think this pretty much sums it up. The 9-9-9 plan is the key reason why Cain is un-electable, even in a GOP primary.

None of the above options.

Everyone needs to be taxed less.

I think the only think more idiotic then 999 is the way this poll is set up.

What would you cut to make up for the resulting deficit?

I would cut Defense, Agriculture, Energy, Education, EPA, our military bases/occupations, and foreign aid.

'Commerce' needs to be abolished too.

http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml

Get rid of all of them except the ones starting with the letter "K".

Good start.  Those are all fairly marginal, other than the defense cuts, but it's something.  If you want to cut the taxes as much as I'm guessing you do, though, I have a feeling you still wouldn't break even with this budget.

Chairman Sanchez, I was having a little fun with the poll options, kind of putting the spin on them that people from the different sides might do with this. 
Concerning cuts, I think the only way you make a serious dent in federal spending, if that is the goal, is to go after the big ticket items that make up the bulk of federal spending, defense, social security, medicare and medicaid.

I hate to say I agree with Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum on this;  I don't want to give the federal government another method of taxing people.  A national sales tax at 9% on top of whatever local sales tax would be brutal.  Also there is no guarantee 9-9-9 wouldn't become 15-24-5 or 9-15-20.

Of course there could always be the worst case scenario for both parties.  Changing the flat income tax back to being progressive while keeping a national sales tax.   

Truly spoken as someone who obviously has never seen the US Federal Budget.  The foreign aid thing really cracked me up.  Why don't you enlighten us.  Tell us what percentage of the US budget is spent on foreign aid.  This should be good...

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Less then 1%. But its a start. You must be entertained by the smallest of things. Hey, why dont we go laugh together at that one lose thread in my living room rug ;)

I don't want to pay more taxes, so his plan makes me less likely to vote for him.

Herman has the tea partiers convinced that he is going to raise taxes on the poor to give tax cuts to everyone else. Once they realize it is a tax cut for the rich paid for by raising taxes on everyone else he will drop in the polls.

But the worse part isn't the regressiveness, it is how amateurish it is and how full of potentially dangerous unintentional consequences to the economy. It makes a good slogan, but the US economy is way to complex for something so simple-minded.

On second thought, Cain's 9-9-9 plan makes a lot of sense.

While we're at it, let's cut defense spending by 20 percent, entitlements by 15 percent each, corporate subsidies by 40 percent, foreign aid by 10 percent, education by 22 percent, energy by 15 percent, and use other arbitrary numbers.

Cain said today that the people who will end up paying more in taxes under his plan are those who buy lots of new goods.  People who buy lots of used goods will do well.

Spending on durable goods represents an increasingly small share of household spending. I'm skeptical.

How does this plan keep track of the "new v. used goods"?  It must take a fairly big bureaucracy to watch over something like that.  What if stores literally decide to open everything before selling it?  Wal-Mart and Target have most of their electronics behind glass or in a locked counter.  So nothing would stop them from removing the shrink wrap, taking the product out for a few seconds, placing it back and the selling it as used.  Thereby eliminating the 9% national sales tax on it?

Places like Best Buy could simply sell the floor model of whatever product, then open a new one to replace the floor model.   Another hypothetical work-around.

Also this could significantly slow down new car sales.  Why spent that additional tax money on a new vehicle when used vehicles are just fine?  Also, could an auto-dealer simply work around the new sales tax by saying test drives have made the vehicle "used" because it has more miles on it than 0?  If so then it wouldn't hurt the auto industry, but it would be another potential way to avoid paying taxes.

This plan has a lot of holes in it.  Although the good news for the conservatives is that there is no such thing as used medicine, food and gasoline, that way the new national sales tax can still affect the people with lower incomes disproportionately more than those with higher incomes.

I think he has some weird love of the word nine, and that is the only reason his plan is 9-9-9.

"“To hurry us along, [Cain] always said, ‘please be back and seated in 9 minutes.’ He’d smile when he said this.” From back in his FED days...

Less: his plan would raise taxes on the vast majority of Americans while increasing the budget deficit.

I like easy ?'s

All fed pensions would settled for 9% of total career paid over 10 years or 1/2 of that for cash.

All fed health insurance nullified, everyone would have eligibility to USPMC or exercise your right to purchase, rated - privately sourced health insurance.

with fewer words here, the Golden Goose thread on the economics board would solve the deficit.

This post made no sense to me, so I checked the "Golden Goose" thread  (http://www.uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=138284.0)that the poster mentions...


I won't make any presumptions about t_host's mental health, but these posts are nonsensical and obviously insane.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66086.html#ixzz1aym8Z5vz

But I thought raising taxes on anyone was class warfare and dangerous during perilous economic times.   Oh wait, that is only if you raise taxes on millionaires. Sorry, my bad.