The chief problem facing us on the revenue front is not that the published tax rates are too high. (And make no mistake, they are too high.) The problem is that so few of the biggest potential revenue sources pay anywhere near those levels in their effective tax rate....And argue as viciously as you like, but none of the biggest employers in this nation are paying anywhere near 35% and in too many cases actually pay much closer to zero once you take out all of the benefits they receive in return.
Meanwhile, the only people really getting hammered on taxes are at the opposite end of the earnings scale. Why? Because major corporations and the very rich can afford the expensive tax lawyers and lobbyists needed to obtain sweetheart deals from Congress and endless tweaking of a tax code which is probably verging on a million pages in length by now.
The poison in this mix is that Democrats are addicted to spending and the Republicans are allergic to increased revenue in any form, which Brooks also correctly notes. The combination of the two is a recipe for a death spiral, and that’s what’s playing out in Washington this month.
Emphasis mine.
