The latest Newsweek devotes nine of its 64 pages to a cover story on Herman Cain’s surge in the Republican presidential race. Among the items covered is Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan.
“In January I was proposing a much more modest approach, pivoting off the current tax code, like all of my opponents in this race,” Cain says. But “as we started in the year and the unemployment numbers stayed up, the economy was growing at an anemic rate, I said to my senior economic adviser, ‘We need a bolder plan. Let’s be bolder.’?”
The actual calculations for 9-9-9 were made by an accountant in Cleveland named Rich Lowrie, whom Cain describes as his “senior economic adviser.” And Cain says the plan received an “A-plus” from Art Laffer, the Reagan-era icon who has been called “the father of supply-side economics,” and who Cain says is a member of his secretive economic team. “Art Laffer, he likes it!” Cain exclaims. “It’s good! It’s powerful!”
Other economists, citing their own simple math, say that 9-9-9 is just a catchy slogan, akin to Domino’s pizza’s 5-5-5 deal. They insist that 9-9-9 would bring in $200 billion less a year to federal coffers than the present system does. Cain says that shortfall is based on incorrect calculations resulting from the fact that he may have mistakenly said the flat tax would be on corporations, when he meant all businesses. “If I said that, my bad, mea culpa,” he allows.
He also contests the widely held opinion that 9-9-9 would be onerous to the 30 million Americans who make so little they currently pay zero in income tax. Cain insists his math has proved otherwise, then asks, “How do you define poor? I define poor [as] you have no money to eat and you have no shelter,” he says. “That’s poor.”
