A tax reform policy I will enthusiastically support
Duncan Black's Tax Fairness Act proposal. I'd even support rolling the tax fairness act down to the state level.
Update:
Atrios is hosted on blogspot, which is, um, not the most reliable place to point links at. The link for the Tax Fairness Act is, um, not resolving to anything useful anymore, so here's the whole proposal cut and pasted:
Tax Fairness Act of 2005
In the comments section of my post about "really bad ideas that voters love" someone made a suggestion which was something I had almost included in the post originally. In any case, the person provided the catchy name. I suggest the Democrats first major legislative proposal, complete with press conferences, laser show, hunger strike, whatever, is the "Tax Fairness Act of 2005." This Act would mandate that, within some reasonable margin of error, your state should get as much back from the feds as is sent to them in taxes. It's time to end this kind of geographic welfare!
Current deadbeat states who went for Bush: (those getting >110%+ of their tax money back)
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Idaho
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming
Non-deadbeat states for Bush:
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Nebraska
Nevada
North Carolina
Ohio
Texas
Deadbeat states for Kerry:
Hawaii
Maine
Maryland
Vermont
D.C. (obviously a special case)
Non-debeat states for Kerry:
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Mass.
Michigan
Minnesota
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Washington
Wisconsin
[Iowa (not deadbeat), and NM (deadbeat) still not called]
...Look folks, for the record this is a "stupid" idea and not one which either should or will pass. The purpose of it is to:
*Get into the public dialogue the fact that the anti-guvmint Bush-voting states to a great degree prosper to whatever extent they do because of an infusion of money from Kerry-voting states.
*It allows Democrats to run crazy campaign commercials like 'Congressman Elephant voted to give YOUR tax dollars to Wyoming!!!!'
...and yes, people, this post is partially in jest...