This was "breaking news" a week ago. The AP story, uncited in the link because it's a stretch to get that out of the story (no doubt), is from 4/10.
And to think I thought somehow I'd missed such a bombshell of a news story.
The relevant portion is
Other options are being shopped on Capitol Hill.
One circulating this past week would change the House Republican plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax and cut corporate tax rates. This would require a new dedicated funding source for Social Security.
The change, proposed by a GOP lobbyist with close ties to the Trump administration, would transform Brady's plan on imports into something closer to a value-added tax by also eliminating the deduction of labor expenses. This would bring it in line with WTO rules and generate an additional $12 trillion over 10 years, according to budget estimates. Those additional revenues could then enable the end of the 12.4 percent payroll tax, split evenly between employers and employees, that funds Social Security, while keeping the health insurance payroll tax in place.
This approach would give a worker earning $60,000 a year an additional $3,720 in take-home pay, a possible win that lawmakers could highlight back in their districts even though it would involve changing the funding mechanism for Social Security, according to the lobbyist, who asked for anonymity to discuss the proposal without disrupting early negotiations.
Although some billed this as a bipartisan solution, and President Barack Obama did temporarily cut the payroll tax after the Great Recession, others note it probably would run into firm opposition from Democrats who are loathe to be seen as undermining Social Security.
The White House would not comment on the plan, but said a value-added tax based on consumption is not under consideration "as of now," according to a White House statement.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_TAXES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-09-08-36-18
Note the prominent passive "shopped" without a semantic subject. Who's doing the shopping? "Trump administration," we'd think. But it turns out to be a single lobbyist acting alone, as far as anybody can tell. He says it would require an additional funding source, perhaps a quirky variant on a VAT tax. Which suggestions in the past have run into Constitutional issues, I'd note, because a VAT tax on imports is not the usual way we think of VAT taxes as being structured. In fact, I had to read it several times to realize they weren't talking about a traditional sort of VAT tax. It just kept not clicking. In fact, if somebody asked me if the article discussed a VAT tax, I'd say "no, but it discusses something sort-of/kind-of like it."
The rest is terra and feah. Run, my pretties, the goblins are on the prowl.
As for any cut to the payroll tax being a disaster, there's a self-contradiction there. There was a cut. It was short-term. It was not a disaster. Although the politics as it was allowed to expire were squirrelly--those who argued that letting a tax expire naturally years before was a tax reduction suddenly had to argue that letting a tax cut expire was not a tax increase. "No, no, it's a negative tax decrease." It wasn't even a valid distinction--"no new taxes"--because by then there'd already been out-and-out tax increases. Some points of honor are best measured in femto-cents.
I can feel my melatonin levels rising already.
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