Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) fired back Wednesday at conservative critics of his tax plan, insisting his proposal would stand second to none in giving a jolt to the economy.
Rubio, who announced his presidential campaign on Monday, unveiled a tax plan last month with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that made tax incentives for families its centerpiece.
{mosads}But some conservatives rapped the plan for being relatively meek in reducing the highest tax rate for individuals — especially with candidates like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) floating flat tax plans.
Rubio, appearing at a Tax Day event with Lee, made the case Wednesday that it was wrong to call a plan that cuts taxes for more than 90 percent of taxpayers an attempt to redistribute income to families.
“You can’t redistribute what already belongs to you,” Rubio said at the Heritage Foundation, arguing that taxpayers’ income didn’t belong to the government.
The Florida Republican also denied he had broken with the precedent set by former President Reagan, whose tax-cutting desire helped drive his popularity among Republicans.
But Rubio also made it clear that, what worked for Reagan in the 1980s wouldn’t necessarily be quite as successful three decades later: “I also think that we need to recognize that the 21st century has some significant differences from when he governed,” he said.
Rubio and Lee’s tax plan would cut the top individual tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, a much more moderate reduction than flat tax plans that would implement a 17 percent across-the-board rate.
The plan from Rubio and Lee would have two rates in all, with a 15 percent rate on family income up to $150,000 a year. For families, the two senators also propose a $2,500 per child tax credit, a way, they say, to end a “penalty” against households that choose to raise the next generation of taxpayers who will fund programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Rubio maintained Wednesday that rolling back that credit, which has spurred much of the conservative criticism the plan, would have little effect on the proposal’s ability to spur the economy.
The two senators’ reform proposal would also cut the tax rate for all businesses, including those who pay through the individual system, to 25 percent, and roll back taxes for capital gains.
By all accounts, the proposal would lose hundreds of billions of dollars or even trillions of dollars when judged by traditional scoring methods. But conservative tax groups have estimated that the plan would spur economic growth and would be a net winner under so-called “dynamic” scoring, and Rubio said Wednesday it was unfair to judge the plan by more traditional methods.
Still, the criticism heaped upon Lee and Rubio from the right gives a peek about the debate over taxes within the GOP — a party long known for backing supply-side tax cuts, but that is also struggling with how to cope with the rise in income inequality.
Lee, for instance, said Wednesday that he certainly saw the appeal of a flat tax system: “If we were starting from scratch, I think that would make an enormous amount of sense.”
But he also made it clear that putting a flat tax into place now would undoubtedly shift the tax burden away from the rich, after years in which Democrats scored political points by pounding the GOP for trying to protect the wealthy from taxes.
“I can’t find an effective way that moves us to a single-rate system that doesn’t involve raising taxes on middle-class Americans,” Lee said.