President Bush gave the press a made-you-look moment when, a couple of Thursdays ago, he was interpreted by a Washington Post reporter to foresee corporate tax rates lowered between now and the day he leaves office. Places where the word "corporate" is a dysphemism and "tax" a compliment issued warnings against any such thing. Before a cause could be organized the president corrected the Post's account. "[W]hat we'd really be talking about," Bush said, "is a simplification of a very complex tax code that might be able to lower rates and at the same time simplify the code." Of course, "might" is read by the mistrustful as "most certainly will," but again, a Democratic legislature should make unnecessary any marches and sit-ins for the sake of federal confiscation.
Former senator Fred Thompson, who appears poised to win his campaign for assuredness to run for president, spoke, according to columnist David Broder, the kinds of words that are not meant to accompany numbers. Thompson claimed that the balance of elected officials and all candidates prescribe "status quo," insofar as "Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements." He did, like George Bush, call tax law "an unholy mess," but he did not identify the state's takings from business as too much. That Thompson was thought by Broder to be forthright is more about Broder's leanings than anything else, because when figures are lined up, the angle of the senator's populism swings away from what is.
The United States government snatches up as much as 35 percent of a corporation's taxable monies — five percent more than do the Australians, and the stubborn statists in England. The rate is double that of Hong Kong, still arguably the best place in the world to do business; it is slightly less and slightly more than twice the respective rates of Singapore and Ireland. If Fred Thompson inveighs against the American citizen and taxpayer "getting a free ride," does he believe, too, that Singaporeans are living the life of Riley?
Assumptions on two questions keep the political class in darkness: 1) where the country's antediluvian fiscal policy stands with the rest of the productive world; 2) how magisterially high corporate taxes diminish the market and, yes, Washington's revenue.