NAME: Arlen Specter
AGE: 65
OCCUPATION: United States Senator (R-Pa)
CANDIDACY ANNOUNCED: March 30, 1995, Washington D.C.
PLATFORM:
   *Pro-Choice on abortion
   *Supports Flat-Tax proposal (20% across the board income tax for
    businesses and individuals)
   *Strong supporter of separation of church and state
QUOTES:

     "When Pat Buchanan calls for a holy war in our society, I say
    he is categorically wrong.  What we need is tolerance and
    brotherhod and simple humanity"

    "Let me say it as plainly as I can:  neither this nation nor this
     party can afford a Republican candidate so captive to the demands
     of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a president of
     the incompetent left"

21 responses total.

Good ideas, Arlen, so I know you can never be the Republican nominee.

Just when I thought every last conservative Republican would kowtow to
the religious right-wingers, along comes an exception.

Exactly the right combination of conservatism, tolerance, and competence
for me. Arlen Specter is my choice. I love those quotes.

I like the sound of the quotations. This man bears more investigation
for sure. 

Another one I don't know much about, but I like his ideas.

  A 20% across the board flat tax rate, for everyone, businesses and
individuals would be grossly unfair.  Specter is just wrong on this one.
It would hurt poor and middle class people and benefit the upper
class who really dont need the help.  Everyone paying the same tax
rate may SEEM fair but life isnt fair to begin with, and most
wealthy individuals have had advantages since birth.  The playing
field has never been even and making it even now would hurt far more people
than it would help.

An important part of the proposed flat tax is the part that goes beyond
the levelling of the graduated tax and deals with the elimination of a 
huge portion of our current tax code.

If you just look at the rates, I am sure it looks like a big win for the 
rich. I suspect that that is an oversimplified view which exaggerates this
effect.

I have to agree that a wholesale redesign of the tax code will have 
winners and losers. I don't think it is so certain that the rich
win anything as a whole. They lose a lot of tax code to hide behind.

If I had to criticize this plan, I would go after the total revenue numbers.
I am concerned that it won't generate enough revenue at the rate to
be "neutral". I doubt Specter's arithmetic.

I like Specter's politics pretty thoroughly.

We had a pretty good discussion of the flat tax item in the spring agora.
I'm all for simplifying the tax code.  I think "flat tax" is a misleading
term.  We already have a flat tax - just one that has been tinkered with
a lot to make it more liveable (theoretically) for the spectrum of income
levels.  We need to un-tinker it.  (IMHO)

I think Specter is using the term "flat" to mean "not graduated" and also
to mean "not tinkered (much)". Our current tax is graduated and therefore
not flat. I would not consider "graduating" the tax rates to be merely
"tinkering". Therefore I reject your description of our current tax system
as "flat, but tinkered with".  It is "tinkered" for certain, though, and
I thoroughly agree that this should be undone. It'll be "no sale", though,
unless the detinkering of the tax code is accompanied by flattening, and
also it is a requirement that the mortgage interest exemption not get the
axe. These are political requirements.

I'm sure a lot more "must haves" will be added to the list of "keeps" in
a new system.  Mortgage interest?  Yup.  Spouse?  Yup.  Kids?  Yup.  Business
expenses?  Yup.  Charitable deductions?  Yup.  Etc.  I hope that when the
politicos get done tinkering with the untinkered reform, there is something
worthwhile there to vote for.

Just how politically viable Specter's flat tax proposal is remains to be
seen, but it rejects all "keeps" except the home mortgage deduction.

Out of curiosity, how does he justify keeping that (the mortgage deduction)?
As a renter, it would seem that I subsidize other people's homes.

The theory is that it encourages home ownership by reducing the cost of
buying a house by the value of the deduction. In practice...I remember reading
in an editorial on the issue that dropping the cap on the value of mortgates 
this applied to from $1 million to $300,000 would save the government something
like $14 billion a year and affect only 1% of taxpayers. I don't think the
government needs to be in the business of subsidizing luxury homes for the
wealthy...

More fundamentally, things that should be subsidized are generally
things that are good for improving the society as a whole but which need
help to be economically viable.  We subsidize transportation rather
heavily, for example (although whether that is a good idea or not is
fodder for another item.)

The official story, I guess, is that neighborhoods with high home
ownership are more socially stable and such.

I'm sufficiently cynical to believe that the real reasons for
subsidization of home ownership have to do with the political clout of
organizations that benefit from it.  I don't particularly like it
because it is doubly regressive (poor people may not be able to afford
homes at all, and certainly not nice ones, plus it's a deduction and
therefore benefits those in higher tax brackets much more.)  Moving
toward a flat tax and limiting the value of deductability does some to
address this issue, though there are also regional inequities.  (Always
wondered how long until the California folks start to complain that a
$250k house in the Bay area is not at all the same thing as a $250k
house in Topeka.

Actually, it would be interesting to see what would happen if the
deduction were eliminated.  Since the deduction's availability to all
primary-home-purchasing people would go down, one might suppose the
market would have to lower prices to compensate.  It's not clear to me
that the effective purchasing power, after market forces have their way,
of the average American would be lowered all that drastically.

What about people already locked into a mortgage?

Obviously any change would have to be phased in over time, to give people
time to adjust to the results.  Since the portion of the payment made
as interest goes down over the course of a mortage, a phase-out of,
say, ten years would allow ample time.

They would, however, face the prospect of the property value declining
as the market drives pricing down because effective buying power is
reduced.  This would benefit them, however, in their next move anyway.
Americans move often enough for this to not be a big problem for a
fair segment of the population; unfortunately, those it would hurt
most are toward the lower middle class and struggling to hang on to
their homes.

The last "flat tax" proposal I heard about proposed eliminating the
mortgage interest deduction.  Fortune Magazine predicts that the
elmination would cause a 12% drop in housing prices.

The flat tax proposals keep the deduction for dependants, and in
some forms substantially decrease the tax burden on low wage earners.
The wealthy would pay about what they pay now.

12% might be overstated, but it would be a real drop.

If there were a widespread uniform drop in housing value, communities
probably would be forced to raise property tax rates to maintain revenue.

Arlen Specter has withdrawn from the 1996 Presidential race.
<bruin does his Freddie Mercury tribute by singing _Another One Bites the
Dust_>

  Arlen got overshadowed by colin powell and couldnt raise any money
while everyone was waiting for Colin.  Arlin was also stupid because
he spent all his money running in these beauty contests and straw polls
which involve only the hardcore way more conservative than usual 
GOP organizers.  He should have budgeted his money for when the4
actual elections started.

As it is, he had to skip the florida straw poll last week because his
campaign couldnt afford a roundtrip plane ticket.  Seriously.  Arlen's
campaign manager told him he could fly one way d.c. to florida but
would have to come back on greyhound!  Hardly presidential mode of
transportation!

Maybe he'll run an independent.  Ross Perot is probably calling him.

maybe

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss