Tax Policy:
- Cut the top Business tax rate to 25%(this rate applies to any business which have 3 or more employees outside the owners family).
Make these as the rates:
0%: $0-$100,000
10%: $100,000- $500,000
15%: $500,000-$ 2,500,000
20%: $2,500,000-$ 5,000,000
22.5%: $5,000,000- $10,000,000
25%: $10,000,000- $20,000,000
Over 20,000,000 (a flat rate of 22.5%)
- Have the Income rates be(for Joint ):
0% : $0 -$30,000
15% : $30,000-$75,000
20% : $75,000 - $150,000
25% : $150,000 - $ 300,000
30% : $ 300,000- $600,000
35%: $ 600,000- $1,000,000
39.6%: More than a million
-Keep the itemized deductions
How to pay for tax cut :
- Remove Carried Interest Loophole
- Put a 25% wealth tax on off shore tax havens in the first year you collect taxes from those havens
- Make Companies who outsource jobs pay a higher tax then those who dont
I think there are two many brackets.
Budget Policy:
- Cut Military Spending by 15% over the next 10 years
- end all Pork Barell Spending
- Give the President a Line Item Review Power(Which means after the president uses this new line item power the revised bill goes back to congress for an up and down vote , and if the revised bill fails the original bill goes back to the President where he must sign it or veto it fully)
I support a line item veto, but Congressional earmarks have been banned since 2010. As for the military spending, I think across the board cuts are a mistake but there are reforms that should occur starting first with an audit of the pentagon, aggressively pushing for procurement reform and then using the savings to ensure the troops have the equipment that they need.
How to reduce healthcare costs: Allow Prescription Drugs to be imported from Canada , and use that to lower drug prices in the US. Also open up state lines to lower cost of insurance.
Healthcare costs source from more than just drug costs though. You need a reform of the delivery system. All this debate and focus is on the "coverage and access". Beyond that we have to address payment schemes, delivery, integration of technology and other ways to improve outcomes and reduce costs.
Social Security: Raise retirement age to 68, raise the cap for the payroll tax , and lower benefit to rich retirees .
Infrastructure:
- Invest between 500 billion - 1 trillion in Infrastructure over next 10 years (Use tax money you got from the offshore havens to pay for this , and some of the cuts in military spending)
I would support these measures, but I would advise that the Highway Trust fund, the grid and such need ongoing money sources for maintenance and modernization. The Gas tax should be raised and pegged to the cost of Gasoline so that if it does spike it goes down to ease the burden but gasoline is cheap right now. Longer term they need to look at alternative sources for once most of the vehicles will be electric. I think it is very fiscally conservative to say that if you use something, you should help pay for its upkeep and we need to look at this from a sustainability perspective. We could spend $1 Trillion in new projects and catching up, but fall behind again if their isn't sufficient on-going revenues.
Education Cost Reform:
- Limit the amount of student loans to cover the cost of an instate college(So around 20k-25k a year per student).
- Give companies tax breaks who pay for part or all of the cost of college for a student.
The way that college education has been handled is basically to throw gasoline on the fire of tuition inflation, which spills over into health care costs because doctors need to pay off their college loans. I think there should be caps, I think we should encourage responsibility in education and encourage people to pursue fields that will produce incomes.
Reduce the costs of Welfare:
- Raise Min Wage to 10.50 (Inflation adjusted)
- Hire people who are on welfare to work on an infrastructure project(this should reduce unemployment rate)
Raising the minimum wage does help reduce the deficit and encourages people to work, but it also risks further automation and that is something that has to be concerned about. It has to be balanced since it means at some point diminishing returns as jobs lost from small businesses outweigh the increase in incomes. So at some point you have to switch over and rely on the EITC to accomplish the same effect and rely less on the minimum wage. I would be fine with $9.15 or $9.50. And that is still substantial increase from current rates, a 30% increase in gross income for the lowest paid workers. Between the two, you could see a boost of disposable incomes among that group increasing 40% to 45% depending on how it is structured and that impact would be very positive on the economic growth rate.
As for the infrastructure, there are some opportunities, but construction is a skilled workforce now. It is not like in the 1930's when you just hand someone a shovel and a hammer. I saw a House Hearing on this a week ago, that talked about how the average age for a skilled construction worker (I would assume for roads), is 53 and rising fast and that touches back to the education issue as well.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said recently, is that one of the big hindrances facing the economy is the lack of skilled workers and when we say that we often think "More college, More College" but one of the two skills he listed were computers, the other was welding, a trade skill. There has to be a balanced education policy and our policy the last few years has basically been skewed towards trying to make everyone a Stem, Lawyer or a Doctor, and there is more to it then that.
We start investing in infrastructure over a 10 year period and a provide a long term funding source for the highway fund suddenly the infrastructure issue is going to be moving from one of funding to one of finding the skilled workers and those wages will be through the roof because of shortages.