Who Wants to Buy a Bridge?

"To compete, we have to go bold now."  So says Kevin Brady.

Bold or reckless?

Bold or foolish?

Bold or deaf?

Kevin Brady makes it clear that he believes he knows tax law, and unfortunately, apparently, the rest of us don't.

He's sure that the JC Penney CEO is wrong - his taxes won't be 170%.  Marv Ellison SAYS they'll be 170% but Kevin Brady knows better.  Here's what the expert says:

"I disagree . . . and I'm a big fan of Marv Ellison and JC Penney is a Texas company.  Truth is, they're important to us.  All the importers are important to us."

So irritating.

Brady continues:  "But we're not going to have a tax code that favors foreign products over U,S, products, and companies like [JC Penney] are struggling the most in the regions that have seen their jobs pour overseas.  That's why the Border Adjustment Tax is so important.  Here's our solution on this:  Marv Ellison doesn't want to see either consumer  hikes or tax hikes, and the good news is, neither do we.  So how we design this, how we phase it in to make sure as the currency adjusts, the economy adjusts, that we make sure it's all about growth, all about jobs. We want JC Penney to grow as we do the other retailers."

So much BS here.

JC Penney is suffering because of migration of sales to Internet competitors.  This is killing the entire retail sector.  The assertion that this phenomenon relates to Federal taxes is, frankly, laughable.  It does not take much in the way of lost sales to destabilize a retailer.

The currency untruth has been debunked in this space. Brady doesn't care.

The assertion of many companies, including ours, that tax rates will skyrocket over 100%, falls on deaf ears.

The solution to the problem is as absent as healthcare for 24 million people under Brady's other big initiative.

Brady can't resist and carries on to assert that we lost manufacturing jobs because our tax code is not "right". That assertion has no basis in fact, either. This is a bastardized slogan, tying frustration over inversions to the loss of jobs owing to a labor arbitrage.  We make our products overseas.  Does ANYONE actually believe we do that to evade U.S. taxes?  That's totally nuts.

And let's not forget, since when did Kevin Brady become a business expert?  When did he last run a company?  Never, you say?  Hmmm.  I am really not happy about the Federal Government taking over the economy.  The Republicans seem to want a planned economy, and Brady is laying out the basic principles.  It's un-American in the extreme, not to mention doomed to fail.

And when confronted with the news that retailers say they will go bust under the BAT and asked to assure them that they won't, Brady concludes:  "Yes, I can.  There's a big difference between a sub-2% economy and a 3 and 4% economy.  There a difference between sky high corporate rates and the biggest rate cut I think in [history] for businesses, and when America can compete and win . . . that's going to help our retailers in a big way."

You heard it - we're all nuts or incompetents, and should just trust Kevin Brady and Paul Ryan. They plan to cut my taxes down to a mere 165%.

I see a Democratic majority on the horizon.