Newt Gingrich

CHART OF THE DAY: Gingrich Tax Plan Would Codify Lower Taxes On Rich Than On Middle Class

Brian Beutler | December 13, 2011, 5:04AM

Newt Gingrich addresses a tea party rally in Staten Island, NY on December 3, 2011.

On Monday, the Tax Policy Center published an analysis of Newt Gingrich's plan to overhaul the tax code -- the latest in a series of of analyses of GOP presidential candidate tax proposals. And like all the plans that came before it, Gingrich's constitutes a massive tax cut for the rich. Indeed, no matter how you stack the numbers, Gingrich wants a tax system that permanently holds tax rates on the highest earners lower than tax rates on the middle class.

There are a lot of ways to parse the data. Gingrich proposes creating an alternative tax system that would significantly flatten the code, while keeping the current one in place as an option. So you can run the numbers assuming everybody jumps into the new system, or you can run them assuming that the only people who hop into the new system are people who would benefit financially as a result. And you can compare Gingrich's plan to current tax policy -- including the Bush tax cuts and other temporary tax policy -- or you can compare it to current law, which assumes all of these policies will expire in the next year, and go up on just about everyone.

To be as fair as possible, let's take Gingrich at his word that he would extend the Bush tax cuts for those staying in the current system, and that the only people who would opt into the new system are those who would pay lower taxes as a result.

Here's what happens to people's average federal tax burden as a result.

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Medicaid

ObamaCare Challenge Exposes Conservative Hypocrisy On Federal Power

Brian Beutler | December 12, 2011, 1:21PM

The Supreme Court in Washington, DC

Next year policy wonks, politics junkies, and legal experts will wait with bated breath for the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of a key section of President Obama's health care law: the mandate that uninsured individuals purchase health care coverage.

But the court will also review another major piece of the law -- the requirement that states expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line. This is no small expansion. Of all the millions of people expected to become insured under the law, about half will be covered through Medicaid.

For the first several years, the federal government will pay the states for the full cost of the expansion. After 2020, the federal contribution will drop to 90 percent. States with conservative governors don't like this one bit. But Medicaid is a voluntary program -- if states don't like the terms and conditions the government sets for the program, they're free to drop out of it.

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Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi Games Out The Long Fight Over Medicare And The Rest Of The Safety Net

Brian Beutler | December 7, 2011, 4:45AM

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

Eight months is a long time in politics, but it will be eight months ago next week that House Republicans voted overwhelmingly for a budget that envisioned a massively scaled-down social safety net -- a smaller, privatized health care system for old people, to replace traditional Medicare; Medicaid financially constrained, and handed over to state governments; cuts to various other support programs that benefit the poor, the young, and the elderly.

That didn't sit well with voters. And in the months that followed, Republicans tried to contain the fallout by making federal deficits a central political issue while forcing Democrats to agree to real cuts to these programs -- all while refusing themselves to raise taxes, even on the very wealthiest Americans.

This too didn't go according to plan. The GOP upheld its vow not to raise taxes; Democrats insisted new tax revenue was a criterion for cutting benefits; and Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security avoided the scalpel.

At least for now.

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