GOP Pushes Their Own Budget Plan

At last the so-called "Party of No" is morphing into the party with their own plan.

So the entire House GOP elected leadership will join Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee, for Thursday’s event. “It’s the old ‘I want to see it in writing,’” said a top House Republican official. “They’re going to see it in writing.”

Another official said: “We need to hold something up and say, ‘Here are our charts. Here are our graphs. It’s real.’”

Now they need to hit hard on the part about Congress stripping the tax cut for 95% of Americans from their version of the budget. They need to offer a steeper tax cut for those 95% and say that the Dems want to tax you to death when you can barely keep your head above water.

Then say something like "We are following plans from that great tax-cutter: Bill Clinton. You thought I was going to say Ronald Reagan right?" Then point out that the Clinton's 1997 tax cuts ushered in years of prosperity and growth. In other words use Clinton against the Dems in order to bolster the pro-tax cut position. So whenever someone squawks about "tax cuts for the wealthy" just say Bill Clinton understood that cutting taxes for everyone creates prosperity.

About 57% of the net Clinton tax cuts would go to families in the middle and fourth income quintiles. This compares to only 18% under the House tax plan and 21% under the Senate plan.

Taxpayers in the bottom 40% of the income scale would receive, on average, no benefit from Clinton's proposed tax cuts. Those in the bottom 20% would pay higher taxes, and those in the second 20% would pay about the same as now. The small income tax cuts in these groups are more than offset by higher excise taxes, primarily on airline tickets and cigarettes. In this regard, the Clinton plan is similar to its congressional counterparts.

The top 5% of taxpayers would receive 13% of the tax cuts under the Clinton plan. In contrast, the House plan offers 56% of its tax cuts to the top 5%, and the Senate plans offers 53%.