10-07-2011, 10:11 PM
Spock wrote:
I am surprised that no one has pointed out that Neal Boortz is a denizen of right wing syndicated talk radio who worships at the altar of Ayn Rand.
I had no idea who he was. I was just analyzing an argument. But now I can see why he so disingenuously rounded 13.996 Billion down to 13 billion and 5.6% to 5% (which makes a huge difference when multiplied by billions) - just another ideologue trying to force facts to fit his world view. It also makes it easier to understand why he was foolish enough to not realize that Reid's plan only kicks in on income over $1 million. A household making a million and one dollars would pay the 5.6% extra tax on only the one dollar over the million. IOW, it's an increase in the marginal tax rate for those making over a million dollars. If he had done his calculations based on that, using the method and numbers he used otherwise, he would have come up with a zero dollars of revenue coming in from the tax - because he assumed any household making a million dollars or more was making exactly a million dollars, with the surtax being only on the margin above a million, none of them would have paid anything. Think of how magnificent that would sound to his minions - the Democrats want to raise the rates on millionaire income earners by 5.6% and it won't raise any revenues at all to pay for the jobs plan!
I think that DaveS chose to post this in the forum indicates something about his approach to these kinds of things. I don't think he would have posted it if he hadn't read and thought to himself that what this guy is saying makes sense. When I read it my first thought was that Reid almost surely ran this by the CBO and it checked out, so most likely the author had made a mistake or mistakes. I didn't want to put a lot of effort into analyzing the article because I supposed that it was in error because I supposed that Reid had run it by the CBO, but I thought I'd take a quick swing at it, so I mentioned the assumption the author made that any household making a million dollars or more is making exactly a million dollars. There's a huge amount of obvious slop factor in that one. Anyway, I thought since I'd taken myself out this far in this less than edifying adventure, I should do my due diligence and check to make sure that Reid did indeed run the numbers by the CBO. Just as I expected, he did:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=2875
CBO estimates that enacting Senator Reid’s alternative bill would increase the budget deficit by $285 billion in 2012 and decrease deficits by $6 billion over the 2012-2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of $6 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending and tax cuts and $453 billion in additional tax revenue from the offset specified in the bill.
I know some people don't take the CBO as authoritative, but unless someone goes through their numbers and shows me where they are wrong, then I am going to assume that Reid's plan does pay for the jobs bill.
Oh, from the same CBO link above:
S. 1660, Senator Reid’s alternative bill, replaces the offset provisions in S. 1549 with a surtax of 5.6 percent, starting in 2013, on a taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income in excess of $1 million (or $500,000 in the case of a married individual filing a separate return), indexed for inflation. JCT estimates that this surtax would increase revenues by $453 billion over the 2012-2021 period.