The Benefit and the Burden begins with a short history of American taxation and a description of the core issues in the definition of income. It follows with some discussion of the principal economic arguments that have flowed around the relationship between taxes, growth and fairness, and then proceeds to examine the issues surrounding preferences in our tax code – for housing, for charitable contributions, for capital gains, and the problem of taxing corporate profits. It ends with a discussion of reform proposals, and Bruce makes his case for a VAT to close the revenue gap and fund the government that we will need, among other things, to support an increasingly elderly population.

When you have the kind of power Grover Norquist has held — namely, decades of unquestioned dictatorial control over the Republican Party as its grand ayatollah of anti-tax orthodoxy — it’s easy for a wee bit of hubris to creep into your thinking. The result is the occasional burst of excessive honesty, as exemplified by [...]

The main way that the US can insulate itself from the crisis in Europe is through continuing the fiscal state of emergency in the country, as the only ballast for growth. Unfortunately, we have a dysfunctional Congress, so the only way to realistically do this is to not slip backwards and turn fiscal policy negative by allowing several measures to expire at the end of 2012.

The American people overwhelmingly think the Super Committee will fail to reach a deal on the deficit. According to Quinnipiac polling, an overwhelming 67 percent think the Super Committee will fail to come up with a plan, while only 27 percent think it is likely that they will.

There is now a deal, and Speaker Boehner needs Democratic votes to pass it because of his unruly and recalcitrant TeaParty membership, members of the Progressive Caucus must stop the deal. By stopping the deal at the last minute, the House Progressive Caucus forces President Obama to use his constitutional authority to ignore an illegal law that questions America’s public debt: the debt ceiling.

Kill the deal. Fourteen-four or Bust!

Harry Reid is working on a debt limit proposal that would satisfy two key Republican demands. It would sustain the dollar-for-dollar relationship between spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit, and it would not include any revenue increases.

This gamesmanship at the end of the process blew up what would have been a substantial deal, with well over $3 trillion in spending solutions, more like $4 trillion if you include the foregone debt payments that would result. And yes, the accounting gimmick on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq accounts for a full trillion dollars.

I find this almost unbelievable, and I expect a walkback anytime now, but Grover Norquist told the Washington Post editorial board today that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would not constitute a tax increase for the purposes of his anti-tax pledge.

Democrats who save the Republicans’ bacon by approving a budget deal that includes anything that can be credibly described as Medicare cuts will be tarred by the electorate.

Today the Congress returned to session for a month in which the Treasury Department is expected to reach the debt limit. They may be able to take extraordinary measures to keep under the limit for a while, but it’s likely that under normal conditions, the limit will be reached this month. Joe Biden will open a discussion between the parties on how to get a vote passed to increase the limit this week.