DiscussMormonism.com

How do you lower taxes AND balance the budget? If you're Mitt Romney, the answer is as clear as his tax returns: none of your business.

Romney promises to close loopholes in the tax code to make up the revenue gap. Which loopholes?

"I know our Democrat friends would love to have me specify one or two so they could amass the special interest to fight that effort," Romney told [Time Magazine] managing editor Richard Stengel.

So Romney's not afraid to make the tough decisions to balance the budget. He's just afraid to tell you what those decisions are.

The mortgage tax deduction is absolutely one of those items. I favor eliminating it, but Romney won't come out and say it because of fear of blowback. I hate this disingenuous form of campaigning, but "say nothing and coast to victory" as a strategy has had some successes recently.

I know Obama has a vaunted reputation as a great campaigner, but I'm convinced his team, outside of fundraising, is actually fairly bad. He lucked into some fortunate circumstances. And the fundraising Juggernaut that he is has been overtaken by Citizens United to that point that he's an underdog in that regard.

Obama's team should be going hard after this. If Romney won't say, just flat say that either the mortgage tax deduction is one of those things, or the budget can't possibly hope to be balanced, even using Ryan's long, long timeline for doing so. The mortgage tax deduction happens to be hugely popular among middle class voters, so it is a touchy subject. The middle class gets crushed in the Ryan tax plan and Obama's team isn't the greatest at knowing how to point this out. And this, as Henry Kissinger would say, has the additional merit of being true.

How do you lower taxes AND balance the budget?

You could go a long way towards it by cutting social spending in half (from 1.6 trillion to 800 billion) or more and just giving cash to the "poor" at an average of 10k per person per anum (a family of four would get 40k) which is as much or more than most receive already. Of course I wouldn't necessarily do it that way but I would certainly cut social spending in half. Defense? That's a Constitutional mandate so I wouldn't cut it much, perhaps I would increase it.

We ought to reject the false premise that the budget will be balanced "on the backs of the poor" or the elderly as they have no constitutional expectation to be supported by the government. Having the barest of safety nets is fine. The problem is that by having one, a constituency, dependent on the government, is created and will always grow bigger. Creating opportunity as opposed to creating an oppressive nanny state is always the way to go.

I would first propose a Federal tax on medical marijuana in the States that have legalized it. I know that it is putting a new tax out there, but it is at least not raising any of the income taxes.

Brackite wrote:I would first propose a Federal tax on medical marijuana in the States that have legalized it. I know that it is putting a new tax out there, but it is at least not raising any of the income taxes.

Marijuana sales are still illegal according to federal law.