Shani O. Hilton of ColorLines is reporting that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan seems to be falling out of favor with voters.
The Washington Post reports that 56 percent of hard-core conservatives don't like the 9 percent flat tax. Perhaps this is because of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center's analysis that the plan would cost 84 percent of Americans more money, which would include many of them. Other than the Tax Policy Center, very little analysis has been done of Cain's plan. Instead, conservatives are turning to Rick Perry's recently announced flat-tax plan for some relief.
Hilton writes:
"Perry's plan doesn't scrap existing tax law altogether, but rather creates a new, parallel tax code that taxes individual and corporate income at 20 percent. Investment income would go untaxed. Every taxpayer would have a choice between staying in the current system, or transferring over to the new one. But as Michael Linden, a tax expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, points out, the new, simpler, alternative code would constitute a tax increase for most Americans and a huge tax cut for wealthy Americans, creating incentives for a small well-to-do sliver of the country to make the switch, and for everyone else to stay put."
We aren't surprised that yet another GOP candidate has introduced a tax plan that would benefit the wealthy. We're even less surprised that Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan is falling out of favor. Once the novelty of the pitch wears off, there is only the truth, which is that the tax plan is flawed at best, and an attempt to pass a tax cut for the wealthy under the guise of a slogan at worst. Slogans to sell pizzas won't work for selling tax plans to beleaguered voters. If Cain wants to be taken seriously, then he's going to have to leave the shock talk and pizza slogans at the door.
Read more at ColorLines.
In other news: Obama Loses 2008 Campaign Donors.