Congress and Taxes

Re Senate Democrats Facing a 'Pay as You Go' Problem by Edmund L. Andrews in today's NY Times:

It is both amusing and infuriating to watch the weasels in Congress. It seems that one of the requirements of office there is to have no backbone.

The other thing that catches my eye is how the private equity and hedge fund managers give big bucks to both political parties (obviously their way of buying access) yet the millions they give amount to only a few hours of their collective earnings. So, they spend about two cents to buy a dollar's worth of extra after-tax earnings. Amazing.

Of course, the solution to our fiscal travesty is simple: start with a basic flat income tax with no deductions, and then make it progressive; the income points where the tax rate changes should be indexed for inflation.

Then the "pay as you go" rule would require either a direct reduction in funding of other programs or an increase in the base income tax rate, or some combination, which results in no increase in the national debt.