Great Salesmanship But Probably Not A Plan America Can Live With

We really like Herman Cain.  His accessible way of speaking.  His demeanor.  His class.  His story of success.  But 9- 9- 9 seems just a little too good to be true, and now his own advisers who helped shape the plan…..agree with us.  Read today what FOX News has on the story.

“It was such a dart board,” economist Stephen Moore said Wednesday of the proposal.

Cain weathered a storm of complaints over his tax plan at the Republican debate in Las Vegas. Virtually every candidate took turns accusing the businessman of pushing a scheme that would introduce new streams of revenue and hit the middle class hardest.

The plan calls for throwing out the old tax code and replacing it with an across-the-board 9 percent income tax, 9 percent corporate tax and 9 percent national sales tax.

Though Cain parried point-for-point with his opponents and stood by the plan, Moore said the debate further confirms his belief that the candidate should strip the sales tax out of his plan, and replace it with a 9 percent payroll tax.

The payroll tax isn’t necessarily popular — but it’s also not new.

“They wouldn’t be able to attack it,” Moore told FoxNews.com. “If he had done that a week ago, then they wouldn’t be able to attack the plan last night.”

Moore said he just wrote a “note” to fellow economist Art Laffer, who helped design the plan and continues to defend it, explaining his position. Moore is also an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal and clarified that he is not actively advising the Cain campaign.

Moore said he likes the sales tax idea and thinks it would be “rocket fuel for the economy,” but explained that it’s just too much of a punching bag. Ideally, he said, he would lift the cap on income subject to the Social Security component of it, so “LeBron James would pay 9 percent tax” on his full salary.

Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 19, 2011