Half the fun of watching the sunday talk shows for me is how people manage to talk for minutes at a time without saying anything, or appear to say something they think people want to hear even though what they are actually going to do is completely different. Cracks me up... sometimes I laugh outloud. Like yesterday on Meet the Press, the conversation between Rep. Bill Thomas, (R-CA) and Tim Russert went something like this (after some insanity distinguishing the phrases "beating a dead horse", "dead on arrival and "barking up the wrong treee":
REP. BILL THOMAS, (R-CA): Social Security is an important issue, no potential solution is above being looked at and isn't it great that Bush is giving us the opportunity to discuss these issues.
Tim Russert: what if we tried this?
REP. BILL THOMAS, (R-CA): why would we do that?
Tim Russert: what if we tried that?
REP. BILL THOMAS, (R-CA): why would we even bother looking at that?
Tim Russert: what if we tried this, that or the other?
REP. BILL THOMAS, (R-CA): that's stupid
so, what I get out of this is: all things should be considered as long as they are solutions he likes.
ok, here are the real thing:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me raise another one. Right now you pay the payroll tax. It's capped at $90,000, the first $90,000 of your income. Some have suggested, even Republicans, that that $90,000 cap be increased so that people who make a higher income would pay more payroll tax. Could you look that the?
REP. THOMAS: Well, my argument, of course, is why even bother looking at the payroll tax? That was a solution in the 1940s and the 1950s. Right now the United States is paying a number of the social costs of the Europeans and the Asians through their tax structure. We pay some of their costs. They don't pay any of our costs. My point being there may be ways to fund the needs for revenue that would look beyond the payroll tax. Why go back to the same old solution? When it was 2 percent, doubling it wasn't that big a problem. Now that it's 12 percent, we actually are dealing with a job-killer; the higher the payroll tax, the fewer people are hired. Why does that have to be the way that we solve the financing problem? Let's find revenue that doesn't continue to kill jobs but also meets our needs. Those are the kinds of discussions that I think would be very fruitful. None of this would be happening without the president's willingness to put the issue of Social Security on the table.
MR. RUSSERT: Find revenue in other places--where? Income taxes?
REP. THOMAS: Take a look at--again, why deal with income taxes? Payroll tax is tied to the income. And that's one way of financing them. Other countries have used other taxes. For example, they have taxes that are added to our products that go into their country.
MR. RUSSERT: Value-added taxes.
REP. THOMAS: Value-added taxes. They subtract them from their products leaving the country. The United States is the world's largest importer and the world's largest exporter, and our tax system is out of sync with the rest of the world. We pay their social costs. They don't pay ours. That at least needs to be examined.
MR. RUSSERT: Some will suggest a national sales tax.
REP. THOMAS: Well, I'm willing to look at ways in which we solve our societal problems and not go back to the same old solutions which have never been long-term solutions. By that--when you're dealing with something like Social Security, you're looking at a half a century. Upping the payroll tax or changing the age is what we did in '83. We're back to the table because those aren't long-term permanent solutions. Why go back to them immediately? Why not look at other options? That's what I'm trying to urge my colleagues, both in the House and the Senate, to do.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think it would be difficult to increase the payroll tax beyond the 12.4 percent it is now?
REP. THOMAS: Well, politically it would be difficult, but frankly, from an economic point of view, I think it would be stupid. Why would we make it more difficult to create jobs when jobs are one of the ways we're going to help solve our financing problems over the years? Just as I think it doesn't make sense to dismiss the idea of looking at ways to increase the return on the revenue we already have. And the president's approach, with the individualized accounts, would bring more money to the table. The question of security and all the other factors are areas that we have to look at. But his idea needs to be part of the solution.
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