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Eliminating Payroll Taxes: The Liberal/Republican Argument

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorMar 21, 2009
Siobhan O'Connor
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Interesting piece by Hendrik Hertzberg in this week's New Yorker, where he presents the surprisingly liberal Republican argument for a vacation from the payroll tax. "The payroll tax is a direct tax on work and workers-on jobs per se," he writes. "If the power to tax is the power to destroy, then the payroll tax is, well, insane."It's a compelling argument, and not only because it refreshingly blurs the lines between Democrats and Republicans:In one form or another, without much fanfare, it has earned the backing of such diverse characters as Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens, the liberal economist James Galbraith and the conservative economist Irwin Stelzer, Republican heavies like C. Boyden Gray and Democratic heavies like Robert Reich. It's ambitious, it jumbles ideological and partisan preconceptions, and it represents the kind of change that great crises open political space for. Does that sound like anyone you know?You can read the entire thing here, and about the larger effort to eliminate payroll taxes here.
elections and politics

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