The GOP tax plan: long on wonkery and attempts to please particular groups, short on being driven by the basic principle of freedom

I'm pretty much in the camp of Erick Erickson at The Resurgent in it:

 It is not very bold. I was really expecting more. Yes, I was expecting more even from this group of Republicans. I’d like to say I support it. I very much like the framework the House GOP released and I think even this heads in the right direction. But my initial impression is it kinda sucks and, to be honest, I was going to write here that I still think it should pass despite thinking it kinda sucks. Then I read this. It makes me wonder what else is in the legislation. And, honestly, I hate the idea of this “bubble tax.” So while I’d like to support it and intended to support it here, the article on the “bubble tax” makes me think I need to wait and see what other fine points are in the legislation. Let’s face it, a plan may be great, but the legislation is what matters.

The legislation does not dramatically simplify the tax code. In fact, in some areas it complicates it. It does not boldly shake up tax dynamics in the country. It pulls punches, so to speak, leaving a lot on the table. I think people need to understand that this actually has far less to do with House Republicans and far more to do with Senate Republicans. The House GOP had to pass legislation that can get 50 Senators to support it. The Senate GOP talks a good game, but too few of them really care to help fix our failing tax system.

The linked "this" to which he refers is this Politico article . The "bubble" (Hey, I have a suggestion. Any legislation that involves codification of goofy terms like "tax bubble" ought to be deemed way too convoluted from the get-go. What say?) is an attempt to pursue the aim of deficit reduction while offering advantages to middle-class taxpayers:

Thanks to a quirky proposed surcharge, Americans who earn more than $1 million in taxable income would trigger an extra 6 percent tax on the next $200,000 they earn—a complicated change that effectively creates a new, unannounced tax bracket of 45.6 percent.

It hasn’t been advertised by Republicans, who have described their plan as maintaining the current top tax rate of 39.6 percent. And it goes against decades of GOP orthodoxy that raising taxes on the rich discourages work and reduces economic growth. Reached by phone, Steve Moore, a tax expert at The Heritage Foundation, said the surcharge was news to him. “I was just in a briefing with the White House on this,” he said. “They didn’t mention that. It seems kind of bizarre to me.”

The new rate stems from a provision in the bill intended to help the government recover, from the very wealthy, some of the benefits that lower-income taxpayers enjoy. Under the House GOP plan, all individuals—no matter whether they earn $35,000, $150,000 or $10 million—would pay the lowest rate, 12 percent, on their first $45,000 in taxable income. That’s a normal feature of current American tax law. But in the new plan, House Republicans want to claw back some of that benefit for individuals who earn more than $1 million, or couples earning more than $1.2 million.

Here’s how it would work: After the first $1 million in taxable income, the government would impose a 6 percent surcharge on every dollar earned, until it made up for the tax benefits that the rich receive from the low tax rate on that first $45,000. That surcharge remains until the government has clawed back the full $12,420, which would occur at about $1.2 million in taxable income. At that point, the surcharge disappears and the top tax rate drops back to 39.6 percent. This type of tax is sometimes called a “bubble tax,” because the marginal tax rate effectively bubbles up for a brief period before falling back to a lower level.

According to POLITICO’s calculation, the surcharge could raise more than $50 billion over a decade—money that will help the GOP meet the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction and required to balance out tax cuts elsewhere. Balancing out those costs means that the bill can pass through budget reconciliation, and Senate Democrats can’t filibuster the bill.

Such sleight-of-hand measures are "necessary" because  no one inside the Beltway, and far too few out in the rest of post-America, are willing to squarely face the glaring fact that annual deficits, as well as the $20 trillion debt, are due to a view of government at odds with the Madisonian vision that held sway until the advent of the Progressives. And the nation is in denial that the main manifestation of unsustainable overreach is the big "entitlements." They remain third rails.

The truly conservative way to deal with tax and budget policy would have a two-fold effect: It would let people keep all of what is theirs save for what's necessary for government to fulfill its basic Constitutional functions, and it would steer the public's thinking away from a view that government ought to be in the business of addressing the universal conditions of human life - namely, that people get sick and grow old.

And now I shall run the risk of coming across as a crank by mentioning the idea that we could go back to a pre-1913 way of raising government revenue. You know, letting people keep the entirety of money that they make.

In any event, like so much that Capitol Hill Pubs want us to get excited about, this plan is underwhelming.