Not a peep?

I thought we learned from Steve Forbes's failed run at the presidency in 1996 that a flat tax was a bad idea. Does anyone else remember this? Forbes was pushing a tax rate of 17% across the board as an income tax as his method to simplify the tax code, which is an election issue for every presidential candidate.

When people pointed out that Forbes's personal income taxes would fall by half, which happened at pretty much every single news conference, he'd say things like, "Yes, I am aware of that." And when people would point out that the tax rate for people earning less than, at the time, about 25,000 USD per year would nearly double, he'd say things like, "Well, maybe we could graduate the rate a bit." It should be noted that what we have now is a graduated tax rate, and that this is precisely the sort of thing that simplifying the tax code is supposed to avoid.

And so the Flat Tax fell to the wayside, along with Forbes's presidential ambitions.

Until yesterday.

President George W. Bush announced that he was happy with the way that Bratislava had implemented their own tax code changes, which included a flat tax (story here). As a matter of fact, the President almost drooled over the idea of a flat tax, which as in the case of Mr. Forbes would cut his and his family's personal income tax payments by half, while increasing tax payments for less-filthy-rich Americans.

And, of course, the Democratic party has been dead silent on the issue.

I recognize that the Republican Party has far more money than the Democrats, and that the Democrats really aren't in a position to do things like make major nationwide ad buys. But just as in every other case where the President has done something stupid, the Party has remained silent. Not even so much as a news release.

Dr. Howard Dean was elected to the Democratic Party chairmanship to add vitality to a party that has been too beltway for too long. So where's the fire?

On Death Pay Benefits

Recently, the 109th Congress has been mulling the idea of increasing the "death pay" benefit that goes to US military personnel killed fighting the War on Terror. Currently, it's about $12,000, which is a nice chunk of change - if you're in high school.

The current proposal, which has bipartisan support, would increase pay to families of military personnel killed in certain theatres (read: Iraq, Afghanistan) since 2001 to $100,000 and increase life insurance payments, which come several months after the fact, to $400,000. All told, this will cost maybe five hundred million dollars.

I mentioned in a previous posting to this weblog that Democrats shouldn't whine or moan about military spending that went towards troop protection or support - body armor was my subject du jour that day.

This is another case where Democrats, who have spent a lot of time complaining about the President's fiscal policy, should shut up and do the right thing. This actually could play into spending policy critiques of the President and the Republican Party in general, especially since the Party bounced the previous House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair, Chris Smith (R-NJ) because he asked for precisely this sort of thing - a death pay benefit (story here).

Thankfully, this pay increase has bipartisan support, but it would behoove the Democrats to ask for one thing: replace the War on Terror stipulation in the bill with "All combat zones," so that US military personnel killed in, say, Bosnia, or any other theater, would receive the same pay. Just because you're not being shot at or mortared by jihadists doesn't make you less valuable to your family.

Seems like a good idea to me.

(Good story on death pay increase here)