The official ATS GOP debate discussion

originally posted by: Khaleesi
Huckabee had a few good lines. He caught my attention with his idea of a consumption tax. Not sure if it would work and I'd be interested to hear more thoughts on that idea.

The problem with a consumption tax is it discourages spending. People try to avoid the tax by spending less and instead saving for the future. That leads to lower tax revenues the following year, which creates a need to raise the tax, which then further lowers spending. Beyond the basics, a lot of the money simply goes untaxed. This creates a need for a very low budget but very little of the budget can actually be cut right now. Out of our current budget, assuming we're willing to cut defense in half, 72% of it is mandatory spending that we cannot cut either by necessity or by law. If we were to fully cut all infrastructure spending, nasa, education, energy, agriculture, justice, and many others we only drop the budget by just over 1/4 which leaves us with needing too much revenue for a consumption tax to work, and we haven't even gotten into the territory of trying to raise additional revenue to pay down the debt.

Even with spending cuts, any reasonable tax plan needs to raise revenues from 3 trillion to closer to 4 trillion per year. We can phrase that however we want but the bottom line is that the government needs to be taking 33% more money. When talking consumption taxes, nothing short of 75% would even come close to accomplishing that, and it would probably need to be even higher than that.

originally posted by: introvert

originally posted by: Blueracer
Points for Rand on giving money to Israel.

Points taken away for giving money to another country when we need it here.

Finally, we agree on something

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

I have to plead guilty to not paying much attention to Carly Fiorina. Like Trump she hasn't held any previous kind of elected office. IMO privately she will be annoyed at how Trump is dominating the air waves. This is because Trump is making it harder for her to raise her national profile which is her goal .

I don't have any reason to dislike Jeb , but I think he has made a serious mistake in running . This isn't the GOP of Nixon , Ford or even Reagan. Loons like Cruz are in charge and will remain so . Rand Paul is an outsider in the Republican party because he displays genuine intellect. Even without all the baggage that comes with his family name Jeb Bush would have been in the same boat as Rand Paul.

a reply to: ChiefD

Did I hear Ted Crez right, when he said he would not grant "amnisty" to immigrants in the U S?
Does he not know HE was given amnisty when his mother brought him here as a child. Being born in Canada makes him an immigrant, plain and simple. This is a fact regardless of whatever comes afterward.
He is not willing to give others the same treatment he recieved.
This si also why he is not elligible to become the President of the United States.
The very "tea party" which embraces him has said so on many occasions when talking about Obama's birth place.