This is nuts. Apparently there is a detailed Jeb Bush tax plan. His website now features a document laden with specific savings that various taxpayers can expect, which can exist only if there are specific proposals to work from. And a team of friendly economists has produced a paper scoring the tax plan, which can also exist only if there’s a detailed document to draw on. And yet, that document doesn’t appear on his website. What’s going on? Why is Jeb’s plan a secret?
For what it’s worth, the economists say that:
- The plan will cost $3.4 trillion over ten years.
- But the tax cuts, along with Jeb’s proposed regulatory changes, will supercharge the economy enough to reduce the actual cost to $1.2 trillion.
- If we limit federal budget growth to 3.2 percent per year, that will save $1.4 trillion. Voila! We’re ahead by $200 billion.
If you believe all this, Jeb has some swampland in his home state he’d like you to take a look at. But on the bright side, this paper does finally solve the mystery of where we can find the details of Jeb’s tax plan: they’re outlined in an appendix at the end of the paper. I guess it’s meant as a special treat for people who actually read the whole thing.
But why is this the only place the details of Jeb’s tax plan are available? Why not post it on his website? It’s a mystery. But at least there’s enough there that independent folks like the Tax Policy Center can probably take a pretty good swipe at scoring it themselves and figuring out the distributional impact. I can’t wait.
