Foreshadowing the next “deal”
by digby
So Paul Ryan spouted some gibberish today about why the GOP can’t entertain even the tiniest change to the tax code in these debt ceiling negotiations. And while it sounds like he’s speaking in tongues, there is a logic to what he’s saying:
RYAN: What happens if you do what he’s saying, is then you can’t lower tax rates. So it does affect marginal tax rates. In order to lower marginal tax rates, you have to take away those loopholes so you can lower those tax rates. If you want to do what we call being revenue neutral … If you take a deal like that, you’re necessarily requiring tax rates to be higher for everybody. You need lower tax rates by going after tax loopholes. If you take away the tax loopholes without lowering tax rates, then you deny Congress the ability to lower everybody’s tax rates and you keep people’s tax rates high.
If you think Ryan is somehow signing on to the idea that “closing loopholes” on corporations will bring in more revenue, you need to re-read Atlas Shrugged. The only “loopholes” they want closed are those that benefit working people — like the Earned Income Tax Credit. They want to lower taxes and they can’t do that in the context of deficit reduction. And their ruse to get that done is to pretend they are “reforming” the tax code. If they start “reforming” it as a way to raise revenue in the debt talks, it will defeat their purpose.
And they have every reason to believe it will go their way in the next round. The administration has long signaled that they are eager to “close loopholes and lower tax rates” just as Ryan wants:
That was last April folks. Does it sound to you as if the administration has been forced into anything it didn’t want to do in these Biden talks — which didn’t exist at the time that statement was made?
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