by Maisie Allison
Jim Pethokoukis hypes it:
At first glance, this looks like perhaps the most pro-growth, pro-market (and anti-crony capitalist) tax plan put forward by a major U.S. president candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980. But it is not without political risk. In addition to killing tax breaks for businesses, Huntsman would eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, healthcare exclusion, and the child tax credit among other “tax expenditures. ” We’re talking about a whole herd of sacred cows.
This strikes me as the kind of broad-ranging tax reform that we need…Even though it decreases tax rates, it’s likely to increase revenue, both because of the elimination of deductions, and because of the economic activity that a reinvigorated, rationalized tax code is likely to spur.
Mark Hemingway is psyched about the "pro-growth plan". Unimpressed, Ezra Klein notes that Huntsman's "revenue-neutral" proposals adhere to generic Republican orthodoxy:
Huntsman’s plan increases taxes on most Americans in order to pay for very large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations…It’s also a plan that doesn’t have anything particular to say about a pretty extraordinary moment in the economy: everything in it, save for the repeal of various Obama-related initiatives, could have been in the Republican platform in 2005, or 2001 or 1996.
Steve Benen calls the plan "ridiculous":
So, Huntsman’s big idea is … more tax cuts.
Jamelle Bouie echoes Benen:
[T]he chief problem with Huntsman’s proposal is that it leaves the Bush tax cuts intact, and any tax plan that doesn’t raise revenue is one that requires massive cuts to federal spending in order to prevent a debt explosion. To give an idea of what this would mean, the Republican Study Commission budget assumes extension of the Bush tax cuts through the next decade, and in order to keep debt from reaching 100 percent of GDP, it also slashes non-defense discretionary spending by 70 percent by 2021, and introduces hugely regressive “reforms”
Weigel entertains a pipe-dream:
Let's say Huntsman wins the nomination — perhaps, keeping with their patterns, news networks exclude every candidate but him from the debates. This stops being a bold tax plan and starts being tax hikes on poor people.
Benjy Sarlin explains where Huntsman diverges from Bowles-Simpson:
[R]ather than using a portion of the revenue from ending [tax expenditures] to help pay down the deficit as Bowles-Simpson proposed, it would instead use them to eliminate the capital gains tax, which disproportionately benefits the ultra-rich. Per ThinkProgress, estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center indicate that a zero expenditure plan would add up to about $1,890 in higher taxes for middle class families while the richest 0.1% of the population would score an average $486,000 in savings from the capital gains cut.
Ponnuru is also concerned:
[I]t seems highly likely that the net result would be a higher tax bill for most middle-class parents, also known as Republican voters. Attacking the financial interests of your own side’s voters is praiseworthy only if it is in the service of good policy.
The Dish 