Frosty Thinking

Martin Frost suggests that Congress could easily fund Katrina relief if they didn't care about being reelected[1]:

Congress could enact a one-time 10 percent tax surcharge (effective for tax year 2005) on all personal and corporate income taxes to help defray the cost of President Bush’s Katrina program. Current Congressional Budget Office projections for 2006 are that the Federal Government will collect $1,013 billion in individual tax revenues and $258 billion in corporate tax revenues for a total of $1,271 billion in total revenue. Ten percent of this would be $127 billion. Thus a 10 percent surcharge would pay for a little more than half of President Bush’s program.

Such a surcharge would be a flat tax…everyone would pay the same rate, no matter how much they earned. Also, it would represent shared sacrifice and would not be a permanent tax increase, but only a temporary one brought about by a truly unusual event.

Of course, anyone who has passed algebra (Spot got a B+) could tell you that a 10% surcharge on current tax rates wouldn't be any sort of a flat tax. Perhaps Frost meant to say something different, but you can see from his own math that he intends to increase everyone's tax burden by 10% of what they owe. Such an increase would actually make tax rates more progressive. Spot must admit that he's glad that Tom DeLay, "took Martin Frost out behind the shed," as Eric would put it. With his wizard math skillz who knows what kind of damage he could have done had he remained in office.

[1] Of course, Congress could accomplish a lot if they didn't have to worry about reelection, and frankly, Spot can't think of a better argument in favor of term limits.