Senator Jim DeMint has taken the lead in the Senate over the past couple of years to promote responsible government spending and sound the warning siren on the waste and excess in the Federal government that is slowly bankrupting our nation. It is for that reason that I am supporting his reelection next year to the U.S. Senate. There are only a handful of representatives in Congress that are taking up this cause and we need to hang on to each and every one of them.
Bloomberg has a featured article on DeMint today that goes over his plan on actions he thinks the government should take in order to save our nation. Here is a piece of that:
Against Bailouts
Thus, he believes that the bailouts of New York-based American International Group Inc. and probably Citigroup Inc. were a mistake, and that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan to purchase toxic assets was a fraud.
He doesn’t spare Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. “If you look at his mission, which is to protect the value of the dollar and to protect employment, the grades aren’t good,” DeMint says. He plans to vote against extending the Fed chief’s term for another four years.
Fiscally, he wants to balance the budget and cut taxes, while acknowledging that defense spending will have to increase. “You’ve got the Air Force flying around in 50-year-old airplanes right now,” he says, “and we don’t have anything scheduled to replace the antiquated things.”
Flat Tax
On taxes, DeMint advocates a flat rate of 10 percent on the first $100,000 of income for a couple, and 25 percent on income above that. He would eliminate all taxes on interest income, capital gains, dividends and estates and end the alternative minimum tax.
For businesses, DeMint would kill the corporate income tax and substitute an across-the-board 8.5 percent consumption tax.
He would balance the federal budget in 10 years and then constitutionally require it to stay balanced.
This would call for draconian changes in the big entitlements.
DeMint would allow those currently 55 and older to receive Medicare benefits at 65. The program would be discontinued for younger Americans, who would get a $9,500 yearly stipend when they turn 65 to pay for private health insurance. The federal- state Medicaid program, which covers health-care costs for poor people, is “financially unsustainable,” he says.
‘Socialist Solutions’
DeMint considers Social Security a “socialistic” measure and blasts the American Association of Retired Persons for promulgating “socialist solutions.”
“What’s the harm of your grandma getting a Social Security check every month from the government?” he asks in his book. “It seems harmless enough, but that check changes the relationship between your grandma and the government.”
In the interview, he talks of reviving President George W. Bush’s failed plan to partially privatize Social Security by having workers put a small percentage of the current levy in a personal savings account.
Now this is an agenda I could get behind wholeheartedly. Medicare and Social Security expenditures are consuming more and more of our Federal budget each year. Today they eat up 44% of it. By 2050, they are projected to account for 18.6% of GDP. Federal revenues as of 2007 were 18.8% of GDP. As you can see, that path will be completely unsustainable. We’ll have to kill the programs or gut them to a fraction of what they provide today, cheating the people (which will include me) who will have paid into it our entire lives or raise taxes so astronomically that we will wipe out the middle class and create an elite aristocracy of the few that have money while the rest of us are serfs on the manor.
I think his Medicare idea has a lot of merit. I also agree with the main principles behind the Bush Social Security plan, however, the main flaw with that is that it would have created a trillion dollar budget deficit off the bat and that is not acceptable so something would need to be done to address that issue. As for his tax plan, I would prefer a national consumption tax to replace the income tax, but a two-tier income tax, much like Reagan had implemented, would be a substantial improvement over the mess we have today.
Rumors have been brewing that DeMint could be a possible presidential candidate in 2012. So far, all the potential nominees being thrown around have not enamored me. He could be an interesting option.
