On the recordNovember 30, 2012
That's exactly the problem. When you start talking about reducing the size of government with unspecified cuts or revenue increases, not rate increases but revenue increases, whatever that means, without specifying, we don't even know whether it is arithmetically possible. But if it is arithmetically possible, what we suspect is that it is going into things like the deduction you get on health care. You don't have to pay--if you get health care insurance, you don't have to pay income tax on that. The mortgage deduction, charitable deductions, the kinds of things that we probably wouldn't want to cut in order to fund some tax cuts, but the Congressional Black Caucus did talk about deferral of overseas corporate profits. If you eliminate that exemption, that's about half a trillion. A 5 percent surcharge on millionaires, that's about half a trillion. The financial speculation tax, when you buy stocks and trade stocks and bonds, you pay a little one-quarter of 1 percent charge on that. Now, before the discount brokers, people would be paying 1 or 2 percent, not just a little quarter of a percent. So that is certainly something that could be done. Limit the deductibility of corporate debt interest. That's about three-quarters of a trillion. Treating investment income like regular income, that's almost a trillion. I mean, there are a lot of things that we can do to add up to get to the little bit of money we need left. Negotiating prices on pharmaceuticals under Medicare.
