The gay marriage debate extends all the way to the tax code

President Barack Obama’s surprise announcement last week of his support for gay marriage has the whole country talking about either the equality or sanctity of marriage, depending on your political perspective.

Though the President’s announcement has no practical effect on government policy, it has exposed the shifting fault lines in America’s culture wars. Since 1996, when Congress and President Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) defining marriage exclusively as the legal union of one man and one woman, public opinion has changed across the political spectrum. As Slate observes,

Democrats, who initially opposed gay marriage and then were evenly divided, are gradually uniting in favor of the idea. Republicans, who used to be united against gay marriage, are becoming more closely divided. And independents, who used to lean against gay marriage now lean toward it. In 2004, if you raised gay marriage as a wedge issue, you divided Democrats, united Republicans, and pushed most independents to the right. Today, if you raise gay marriage as a wedge issue, you divide Republicans, unite Democrats, and push most independents to the left.

Or, in the immortal words of the Who, “The parting on the left, is now the parting on the right.”

And as open gay couples – even some with kids (gasp!) – become a fact of life in more areas than just San Francisco and Manhattan, people are beginning to turn an eye to the practical consequences of gay marriage, including taxes.

The most obvious tax consequence of DOMA is that same-sex couples can’t file a joint tax return, which denies them all the benefits that the married filing jointly status can bestow. Most married couples choose to file a joint return – and not just so one spouse can get out of preparing a return.

According to the IRS, “if you and your spouse decide to file a joint return, your tax may be lower than your combined tax for the other filing statuses. Also, your standard deduction (if you do not itemize deductions) may be higher, and you may qualify for tax benefits that do not apply to other filing statuses.”

Plus the issue of children make things even more complicated. If the two same-sex parents can’t file a joint return, only one of them can claim their child as a dependent, and get all of the attendant tax benefits.

Gay couples’ tax bills can often be thousands of dollars greater than their straight counterparts, simply because they are denied the ability to file a joint return.

But while many have made a big deal about the benefits gay couples aren’t able to receive while they’re together, relatively few have made note of the costs they incur when their relationships end. When gay partners try to divide assets between them at the end of a relationship, they could get hit with gift and income taxes that wouldn’t affect straight married couples at all.

Here’s an excerpt from a very insightful Forbes column by Robert W. Wood:

If you are married and divorce, you can divvy up property tax free. Again, there’s no limit. So if you jointly bought a house, you can transfer your interest to your ex without tax.

Not married? Same sex or not, if you’re not married unwinding a relationship can be very taxing, including income taxes, gift taxes or both. Suppose you give your half of the house to your ex-partner and receive nothing in exchange? You’ve made a taxable gift.

Suppose you’re not feeling that generous and instead deed your half of the house to your ex in exchange for some of your ex-partner’s stock holdings. You both could be hit with income taxes. As the departing partner, you’ll be treated as selling your half of the house to your former partner.

Suppose you bought the house together decades ago for $400,000 and it is now worth $1,000,000? Your half has a $200,000 basis and a value of $500,000. That means you, the departing partner, will have a $300,000 gain. If you qualify for the exclusion on sale of a principal residence (up to $250,000 per person), only $50,000 of it is taxable.

What about the ex-partner who is keeping the house and handing over $500,000 in securities? If the staying-put partner’s basis in the stock is $300,000, he or she will have a $200,000 gain. But here’s the kicker: If the same couple had been married, there would be no taxes paid on these asset transfers.

The President’s announcement will surely not be the last shot fired in this battle, and Americans everywhere have very strong opinions. But before we allow our emotions to get the better of us, we would do well to consider the cold, hard, dispassionate calculus of the tax code and how it affects millions of Americans when they file a return.

According to the Tax Foundation, the day you have to pay your taxes is also the day you pay off your taxes

This year, in a fitting twist of fate, Tax Day and Tax Freedom Day both arrive on April 17. What is Tax Freedom Day? Don’t worry, it doesn’t involve crazies in tricorn hats carrying posters of President Obama with a Hitler mustache (though trust me, April 17 will see its share of crazy protesters). No, Tax Freedom Day is designated annually by the Tax Foundation as the day that Americans have earned enough income to pay off their tax burden.

Americans will have to work 107 days to pay off the 29.2% of their income that they owe to federal, state, and local taxes. If you’re curious that’s

• 32 days for individual federal income taxes
• 8 days for individual state and local income taxes
• 23 days for federal social insurance taxes
• 4 hours for state and local social insurance taxes
• 2 days for federal sales and excise taxes
• 12 days for state and local sales and excise taxes
• 12 days for state and local property taxes
• 9 days for federal corporate income taxes
• 1 day for state and local corporate income taxes
• 3 days for other federal taxes
• 4 days for other state and local taxes

And that’s only to pay for what the government is taxing, not what it’s spending. If it were to close the budget deficit with an additional $1.014 trillion, Americans would have to work until May 14 to pay it all off!

This year Tax Freedom Day has crept a little later in the year, compared to April 12 last year. In 2000 the latest-ever Tax Freedom Day fell on May 1, but on the plus side the government did enjoy a budget surplus. A century earlier, before the existence of the welfare state and before America had shouldered the burden of international responsibility, Tax Freedom Day fell on January 22.

Of course, Tax Freedom Day varies by state. Red states tend to enjoy an earlier Tax Freedom Day – Tennessee as early as March 31 – and those of us deep in the blue have work a couple more weeks. The latest in the nation is the tri-state trifecta, with New York and New Jersey clocking in at May 1 and Connecticut on May 5.

Though an interesting visualization Tax Freedom Day is something of a gimmick, an easy way to incite a mildly libertarian sigh of outrage. As Joseph Heath writes in his book Filthy Lucre

It would make just as much sense to declare an annual “freedom day,” in order to let mortgage owners know what day they “stop working for the bank and start working for themselves”…But who cares? Homeowners are not really “working for the bank”; they’re merely financing their own consumption. After all, they’re the ones living in the house, not the bank manager.

But with all this talk about Tax Freedom Day, don’t forget about the actual Tax Day. File to get your fast refund today (literally) before your taxes become late.

…I will pay a boatload in taxes.

The Mega Millions jackpot has reached a record high of of $640 million, shattering the previous U.S. record of $390.

Coworkers are pooling money to buy tickets on their lunch breaks, local liquor stores and bodegas are crowded with anyone feeling even remotely lucky, and Twitter users are fantasizing about blowing the money on everything from classic cars to cupcakes to AK-47s.

But no matter who is lucky enough to win the money, there’s one sure thing they’ll be spending it on: taxes. Before you start training those baby snakes to kill Congressmen, you’ll have to pony up to Uncle Sam a pretty hefty chunk of change.

The federal tax rate on gambling winnings of this sort is a whopping 25%. Then after you factor in state and in some cases city taxes, that’s about a third of your winnings down the drain right off the bat. Exactly how much depends on how you opt to get paid.

If you choose the lump-sum you get $462 million upfront. Depending on your specific tax situation, a whopping $157 million of that goes straight to taxes, leaving you with about $305 million. Alternately, you could choose to receive annual payments, which would amount to about $20 million every year for 26 years. But that means you have to kick $6.8 million dollars over to the IRs, leaving you with the still not too shabby sum of $13.2 million as an annual income.

Before you rush off end world hunger with a boatload of Ramen Noodles, you might want to consider a little tax planning. Purely from a tax perspective, the best thing to do is take the lump sum. Almost everyone expects tax rates to rise at the end of the year or very soon after.

Taking all of your winnings now might save you some money, but it won’t do you any good if you just run off and spend it all at once buying every Taco Bell in the U.S. (between you and me, there are better investments). According to Don McNay, who wrote the book Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win the Lottery, 9/10 winners blow through their money in less than 5 years.

But if you can exercise some self-control – so hard when you could be swimming in a large vault of gold à la Scrooge McDuck! – all you have to do is invest that lump-sum and you could spare yourself a few extraneous tax dollars.

Trying to combat budget deficits made worse by the recession, many states raised income taxes by as much as 5%.

Here’s some bad news for tax haters: in 2010 state taxes soared as never before.

Thanks to the Great Recession, state governments are cash strapped as they haven’t been since World War II. In 2010 a record-breaking 43 states faced budget deficits.

Unlike the federal government, states can’t really borrow their way out of budget deficits so they have to make the hard choices our President and Congressmen routinely put off: cutting government programs and, you guessed it, raising taxes.

2010 witnessed the largest outright increase in state taxes ever, with combined revenues rising by a total of $24 billion.

The tax increases occurred mostly in a few large states. If you live in the rest of the country you very well may have been able to avoid getting hit by these new taxes.

Most of these states raised taxes to combat soaring budget deficits. But even after tax increases, the budget gaps for states like California, New York, and Illinois remain some of the highest in the country.

Which states suffered the biggest increases to their personal income tax in 2010?

• California – increased personal income taxes by more than 5%
• In 2010 the Golden State’s budget deficit reached $45.5 billion, 52.8% of its general fund.
• Along with the increase in personal income taxes, the state raised sales and corporate tax rates by 5% as well.
• Illinois – increased personal income taxes by more than 5%
• Hit particularly hard by the recession, the Land of Lincoln is suffering from a $13.5 billion budget gap that amounts to 40.2% of his general fund.
• Not only did the state increase personal income taxes, the corporate tax rate also jumped from 4.8% to 7%.
• New York – increased personal income taxes by more than 5%
• New York faces an only slightly less dire budgetary shortfall, with a $10 billion deficit at 17.6% of the general fund.
• In addition to its personal income tax increases, it raised cigarette taxes by 5%.
• West Virginia – increased personal income taxes by more than 5%
• Unlike the other states that hiked taxes, the Mountain State actually weathered the recession relatively well, suffering from a deficit only 8.2% of general funds.
• Nonetheless the state raised personal income taxes and cigarette taxes by more than 5%.
• Rhode Island – increased personal income tax by between 1% and 5%
• The housing collapse hit the nation’s smallest state especially hard, causing it to raise personal income taxes and cigarette taxes by more than 5%.

Alas, no matter how much you despise taxes, these increases are inescapable. Don’t think you can hide from your 2010 taxes, because your problems will only get worse. The best thing to do is file your 2010 taxes as soon as possible.

How the tax code stupidly prevents companies like Apple from spending $1.2 trillion in the U.S.

The death of Steve Jobs last October hasn’t slowed down Apple very much: sales for the new third generation iPad have already broken records, the company has debuted a (possibly) new logo featuring a groovy, retro-flecked rainbow apple, and CEO Tim Cook announced plans to spend almost half of its $100 billion cash hoard on issuing its first dividend since 1995 and buying back up to $10 billion in shares.

Though Apple has consistently proven a bright spot amid the generally gloomy economic news of recent years, even it is not immune to the havoc so often wreaked by our labyrinthine and inefficient tax code.

Apple’s recent spending announcement did not include any of its $60 billion stashed overseas, which the company has no plans to repatriate in the foreseeable future.

In a conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer blamed U.S. tax law for the company’s unwillingness to bring overseas profits home:

“Repatriating cash from overseas would result in significant tax consequences under U.S. law. We have expressed our views to Congress and the administration. We think current tax laws provide significant disincentive to U.S. companies that would otherwise repatriate significant cash they have on hand.”

Apple currently pays an uncommonly low international tax rate of under 3%, compared to 13-25% for most major international corporations. Bringing that $60 billion pile of cash home would send Apple’s tax rate hurtling into this range, somewhere between 4 and 9 times its current level. Yikes! No wonder they’d prefer to keep it over there.

This is a problem I’ve written about before and it’s a problem that’s not going away any time soon.

The U.S. tax code currently operates under a worldwide tax system. When a corporation earns money in a foreign country, it pays taxes in that country. Then, when it repatriates those profits, it has to pay the IRS the difference between what it paid to that foreign country and what it would have paid were that money earned here in the States. This amounts to a huge disincentive for multinational corporations to bring money back to the U.S.

Most countries, including 26 of the 34 in the OECD, operate under a territorial system which only taxes profits in the country where they’re earned. There is no penalty for repatriation. Mitt Romney has made transitioning to a territorial system a large plank of his economic plan and I have to say I agree.

70 large U.S. corporations, including such giants as Apple, Google, Microsoft, GE, and Pfizer, have a combined $1.2 trillion in cash stashed overseas. Thanks to the punishing constraints of the worldwide system, these firms are reluctant to spend and invest this money in the U.S.

As cash-strapped as the government currently is, it’s not getting at any of this money anyway. Plus, if these companies were allowed to invest it in the United States without being penalized, the IRS would be able to tax all of the income it creates. And that’s to say nothing of the even greater bounce the economy would likely get. I’m willing to bet a trillion dollar injection from companies as innovative as Apple and Google would do more to stimulate the economy than any appropriations bill President Obama and Congress can cook up.

A fraudulent tax preparer orders a hit on two former clients to protect his tax scam

The glory age of tax gangsters like Al Capone is long gone. These days it’s very rare that tax-related crime involves anything more exciting than some fraudulent paperwork – which makes this story of a California tax preparer who ordered a hit on two of his former clients all the more extraordinary.

Tax preparer and former IRS agent Steven Martinez allegedly promised a hit man $100,000 to a hit former customers – including an 86 year old woman – who were set to testify against him on charges of fraud.

During his years as a tax preparer Martinez allegedly scammed the IRS out of $11 million. How did he do it? Martinez convinced his clients to deposit the taxes they owed in his bank account, telling them he would pay the IRS when he filed their returns.

Martinez then filed tax returns for them grossly underreporting their income, thus reducing their tax liabilities. He then paid their artificially small tax bills and pocketed the difference, a whopping $11 million.

When his tax fraud scheme was found out, and two of his duped customers tapped to serve as key witnesses at his trial, he decided to up the ante on his criminality, ordering his limousine driver to deliver money to a hit man to have them taken out.

Most tax scams probably won’t feature outlandish plots involving hit men and millions of dollars, but it’s a nice reminder that you should always be vigilant against tax filing scams.

The first thing to do is protect your personal information from identity theft. E-filing is so common nowadays, and so much of our lives is online, it’s easy to forget that you have to protect yourself. Public wi-fi networks are great when you need to kill time at a cafe, but they’re not the best place for doing your taxes. Don’t put your confidential information at risk by filing taxes on public wi-fi. Use an Ethernet cable, or a secure wi-fi network at the very least.

In addition to all of the other horrible stuff identity theft can lead to, it also allows scammers to file a fake tax return in your name and claim your refund. This will make it a lot harder for you to file and get the money you rightfully deserve.

And, as this tale of the homicidal tax preparer amply demonstrates, you have to be wary of fraudulent tax preparers. Don’t file taxes with anyone who doesn’t give you a copy of your tax return, promises you a refund too good to be true, or charges you a percentage of your refund as a fee. Also make sure your tax preparer has a legitimate Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) from the IRS.

Protect yourself and choose your tax preparer well – or you could wind up on the wrong end of a tax preparer hit.

A subway hero explains

The New York City subway system is a scene of many oddities: preteen break dancers spinning on the floor, beggars clanging paper cups full of change, crazies ranting about conspiracy theories, tourists huddled around the map asking directions to Times Square, and commuters whose threshold for weird is so high that they barely raise their eyes from their Kindles.

But tax advice? That’s one of the few things you generally don’t see in Gotham’s labyrinthine tunnels. Last week, however, as I rode home weary from a day of tax writing, the subway tax advice barrier was broken.

A workman – his clothes and work boots scuffed and dirtied by a day of heavy labor – sat next to me scratching away at a $2 New York Lottery Cashword puzzle. Then, from the midst of the crowd that packed into the car at Rockefeller Center, came a booming voice.

“Excuse me, sir, excuse me,” the voice accosted the crossword gambler loud enough to attract the attention of the entire subway car. A tiny young man – barely old enough to have graduated college – emerged from the dense pocket of people and delivered an earnest piece of advice to the bewildered man scratching his card: “That’s tax deductible, you know.”

“What?” asked the man, as stunned as everyone else that the urban law of impersonal anonymity had been so grossly violated.

“The price of that ticket is tax deductible, you could get money back on your taxes,” the boy said loudly, perhaps so he could hear himself over the Beats (by Dr. Dre!) wrapped around his head.

“Yea well, I’m just having fun,” said the man, with an ironic smirk that was surely the envy of every Brooklyn-bound hipster on the train.

“Have fun on a lesser dime, that’s all I’m saying,” retorted the good tax Samaritan, a little hurt, before disappearing back into the crowd.

Was this underground tax advice elf right? Should all of you recreational gamblers out there be deducting the price of your lottery tickets and Cashword puzzles?

In a word: maybe. It’s true that gambling losses are tax-deductible. You can claim them right there on your Schedule A with all your other itemized deductions. But there’s a catch: you can’t claim more in gambling losses than you report in gambling winnings.

The good news is that gambling losses are a miscellaneous itemized deduction not subject to the 2% rule,  which requires certain deductions to amount to at least 2% of your adjusted gross income (AGI) in order for you to claim them.

As with most deductions, it is imperative that you keep accurate records of your gambling winnings and losses in case the IRS decides to audit you. To deduct your losses you need to be able to show the IRS receipts, tickets, and statements documenting both your losses and your winnings.

Mitt Romney may have released his tax returns, but there’s more than one lesson he can learn from the legacy of George Romney

Just before his South Carolina shellacking by a thrice-resurrected Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney fielded a question during a debate about whether he would release his tax returns. Romney hemmed and hawed around an actual answer:

“At the very beginning, I indicated that I didn’t have any plans to release my tax returns and then it became clear that that was of great interest to everyone… There was such an interest in tax returns, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ Hadn’t planned on doing it, but there’s interest, so I said I will release the tax returns when they can all be released at one time.”

This is the sound of a candidacy in crisis – a campaign that cannot anticipate fairly obvious questions and a candidate who cannot think quickly and clearly on his feet.

The media, of course, was quick to invoke the name of George Romney, Mitt’s father as well as a contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

It was George Romney, actually, who set the precedent of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns to the public. Nor did he release the return for only a year or two, but a full twelve years worth:

“He ordered up all the Form 1040’s that he and Mrs. Romney had filed over the past 12 years – including those profitable ones when he saved the American Motors Corp. from bankruptcy and became a millionaire on the company’s stock options.

Romney’s disclosure was apparently unprecedented. While other candidates had released statements outlining their income, assets and other financial data, none had ever released his actual returns.”

Now, after relegation to the role of challenger, his son has finally followed suit, releasing returns from the last two years.

To no one’s surprise, Romney earned $21.7 million in 2010, paying $3 million in taxes, and in 2011 he earned $20.9 million, paying $3.2 million in taxes. Also to no one’s surprise, his tax rate was just below 14%, thanks to the fact that the vast majority of his income was generated by investments, which benefit from a lower rate.

It seems a wonder that this tempest in a teapot managed to reach the boil it has.

When Romney spoke with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell back in December, his tax returns were just becoming an issue. When he said he would “consider” releasing the returns, Mitchell asked, “Is there some secret? People know you’re wealthy.”

This is precisely the point. It’s common knowledge that Romney is worth something in the vicinity of $200 to $250 million. Romney had also previously admitted that his tax rate was around 15%. It’s doubtful putting an exact number on his wealth makes much difference to voters. After all, rich is rich and Romney’s rich.

What I suspect the Romney camp was trying to hide was the Romneys’ $7 million of charitable giving, amounting to 14% of their income.

Normally this would be something for a 1%-er to flaunt, especially with Newt’s charitable giving at a relatively paltry 3%. But Romney’s charity comes with an asterisk: $4.1 million went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in compliance with the stipulation that members tithe 10% of their income.

Such devotion may strike many voters, even deeply religious ones, as unusual, especially since many already regard the Mormon church with suspicion.

There is no disguising that Romney is on the wrong side of the economic zeitgeist. Nor is there any disguising his commitment to his religion. So why bother? Why give himself the opportunity to fumble an issue like the tax returns that doesn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know?

Gingrich’s most recent rise isn’t due solely to the fact that this Cheshire cat seems to have nine lives. Romney has seemed muddled, botching what should be a fairly straightforward political parry – which brings us back to George Romney.

Just as George W. Bush’s presidency was painted as an effort to take care of daddy’s unfinished business, so too are Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations characterized as both an attempt to live up to his father’s high expectations and also avoid the mistakes that doomed his bid for the presidency.

If George Romney was direct and open about his tax returns, he was direct and open about very little else. He was prone to needless gaffes – such as when he claimed receiving a “brainwashing” at the hands of U.S. generals and diplomats in Vietnam.

But he also suffered from an inability to articulate clear responses to issues. A profile in Life magazine described his style of speech as “grandiloquent waffling that so often confounds what he utters.”

The reporter described Romney’s emotional response to an item in the paper dissipating into shapeless, shifting campaign platitudes:

“As I later watched the right-minded shock he had expressed that morning slowly erode into another badly gullied public position, it struck me that this is what makes George Romney so often seem his own worst backer. For all his energy, for all his idealism – for all his loquacity – he still manages to turn self-expression into a positive ordeal.”

The lesson here extends far beyond tax returns. The younger Romney tries his best not to stray from the general platitudes of campaign-speak, which are too often sound like they’ve been filtered through a focus group. Even worse, Romney sometimes sounds like he’s impersonating someone else, a cardinal sin in a political culture that prizes “authenticity,” however manufactured.

Following his father’s example in releasing his returns was a good move, but in all other respects he should leave the Romney family campaign legacy of befuddling behind him. We all know he’s rich, and we all know he’s a Mormon. Why hide it? Without compromising his reputation for steadiness and competence Romney should be frank, forceful, and unafraid to speak freely.

I still have faith that the Newt tornado will drop his grandiose presidential ambitions somewhere over the rainbow, but that’s no excuse for Romney to play it safe.

The rise of Rick Santorum forces Republicans to confront some uncomfortable truths

Put aside Rick Santorum’s opposition to contraception, which he has described as “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Put aside the not-so-subtle racism of his declaration, “I don’t want to make black peoples’ lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Put aside his assertion that the right to privacy “doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution,” blaming it for the evils of the sexual revolution, contraception, abortion, and now gay marriage.

Put aside his opposition to the Supreme Court decision that overturned state sodomy laws, claiming it meant “you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.”

Put aside his characterization of homosexuality as only one step above “man on child” and “man on dog” and of the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s approval of same sex marriage as “an issue just like 9/11.”

Put aside the fact that, were Santorum victorious, the innocent schoolchildren of America would never be able to Google their President’s name.

Try your best to ignore these pronouncements of radical social theocracy, and try your best not to imagine his goblin eyes of inquisition, floating disembodied above an embroidered sweater-vest, peering into your bedroom as you exercise your fictitious right to privacy.

After all, this election is all about the economy, particularly that nasty four letter word: JOBS.

Maybe, just maybe, if Rick Santorum has a plan to turn the economy around, Americans will be willing to forgive his not infrequent lapses of tolerance.

As taxes are perhaps the largest influence the government exerts on the economy – and the primary focus of this blog – a candidate’s tax plan is a useful weather vane for how they would deal with the economy.

On the scale of GOP crazy, Santorum’s tax plan actually comes in on the sane end of the spectrum, though next to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan (now complete with bus tour!), Rick Perry’s postcard flat tax, and Newt Gingrich’s kitchen sink kaleidoscope, that’s not exactly much of an accomplishment.

Santorum wants to reduce the number of income tax brackets from six to two, with rates set at 10% and 28%. He advocates lowering the capital gains rate to 12% and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax and estate tax.

Though he professes a desire to simplify the tax code, he explicitly retains deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, retirement savings, and children.

On the business side, Santorum wants to cut the corporate tax rate in half, from 35% to 17.5% and eliminate all tax on manufacturers, which he claims will “spur middle class income job creation.”

What really distinguishes Santorum, however, is his emphasis on “pro-family” measures like tripling the deduction for children and eliminating what he calls the “marriage tax penalties” spread throughout the federal tax code.

Santorum’s proposals are more radical than those of main rival Mitt Romney, but what’s most striking is their brevity. The twelve measly bullet points on Santorum’s website pale in comparison to Romney’s polished tome, which takes 160 pages to elucidate exactly how his experience and proposals would benefit the economy.

Santorum is unconcerned with the finer points of economic policy. Not once does he bother to explain the benefit of his proposals with any specificity, reverting instead back to the right-wing social engineering that he insists will rescue America.

The introduction to his tax plan sounds this recurring theme:

Rick Santorum believes that to have a strong economy, we must have strong families – because the family is the first economy. Our government must recognize this and create an environment for our families, our small businesses, and our communities to thrive.

His characterization of the family as the “first economy,” absurd as it may seem, does not fall on deaf ears. It is with completely straight-faced conviction that many of his supporters believe the key to fixing the economy lies in strengthening the family.

The Republican contest staggers towards its first showdown in Iowa

Imagine if you will a latter day Rip Van Winkle awaking from a three month slumber only to be coarsely thrust in the front row at the latest of these endlessly recurring Republican debates.

Having shaken the cobwebs from his befogged head and readied it for the battering, he would surely be astonished to find that during his absence the former speaker of House, the dishonorable Newt Gingrich, had, if only for a short spell, managed to float well above his competitors in polls nationwide.

True, our Rip would have been spared the far-fetched, frankly bizarre drama of the intervening months. He will have thankfully avoided the grim spectacle of the Governor of Texas Rick Perry, the famed, perhaps coyote killer, rapidly ascending only to have his commodious chest quickly deflated by a thousand self inflicted, not to mention poorly timed fumbles of memory.

He will also have missed the Hermanator experience, the now quaint saga of a Cain raised, like the Pillsbury dough boy he was, from the warm embrace of a pizza oven for his fifteen minutes of belly poking. Mr. Cain, a self-styled leader if not much of a reader, called it quit not because his ignorance of foreign policy was farcical, but because he had failed to guard his tongue, not to say the snake in his pants, from roaming about the workplace. That 9-9-9 was a triple six after all.

Still, poor Rip would surely struggle to explain the Newt’s own serpentine trajectory. Here was Gingrich in November, a Lazarus miraculously reborn when at midsummer he lay buried with his shambolic campaign in complete disarray. And there he was by early December, shockingly high above his foes in the public’s affections, like a hoary cupid lifted on the flimsiest of wings shooting from a quiver full of garrulous nonsense.

Then, less than a week to Christmas, it was obvious that the Gingrich balloon had been called back to the frozen earth of Iowa in winter, the hot air swiftly siphoned out of it by a volley of well-pointed arrows worthy of a martial arts movie, and its pilot rudely cast down the newly minted Newt Chute. It is reported that, since the Newt’s improbable rise, Iowans have been exposed to more than 1200 commercials trashing the architect of the Contract with America.

As of last week, the former speaker’s damaged vehicle has been overtaken by, of all wobbly wagons, that of Ron Paul. The gnomish doctor has improbably caught that same recalcitrant wave of anyone-but-Mitt sentiment that first the Commodore, next Herman Cain, and finally the Newt himself had surfed on their way to a short lived advantage. It has kept the former Massachusetts governor’s flag stuck at quarter-mast since the start of the campaign.

But while his political fate has grown murky, the unexpected rise of the Newt has clearly been a boon to commentators nationwide. Newt watchers have fallen over themselves to offer words adequate to encompass Gingrich’s capacious ego and match his peerless bombast. They have documented his colorful behavior with the alacrity of ornithologists first sighting the great-billed red-tailed Australian cockatoo.

This is fitting. The candidate’s bloated head makes for an exceedingly fine target, and the more bizarre aspects of his extensive biography positively invite copious verbiage, ripe with pithy neologisms and pungent adjectives meet for a man ever eager for big new ideas, not to say fundamental transformation. So what if they don’t presently make sense? Neither do most of the former speaker’s pronouncements.

The temptation when it comes to the Newt then is always to coin still more qualifiers and see what sticks. One that oozes from the muck and seems particularly apt is amphibious. It of course puns on the speaker’s moniker, not to mention his oily smarminess, by referencing the lizard-like amphibian common in many continents. But, it also suggests Gingrich’s uncanny capacity for regeneration and, more to the point, his astounding ability to navigate both the clear air of reason and the muddy waters of total mystification.

You can file his sensible take on immigration policy or his proposal to expand nuclear energy in the reasonable drawer. His giant mirrors in orbit to ease the spookiness of nighttime driving, or all over the earth to deal with climate change, you can throw in the crazy drawer or, if you wish, in the trash along with his idea to tap the moon for mineral extraction and as a destination for, well, honeymoons.

So we already have a futurist Newt, a lunatic Newt and, really, why stop there? Gingrich is a whole village of Smurfs wrapped in one corpulent package. A recent favorite, though, has to be Newt the accidental Swiftian.

Gingrich could once have fairly been called Dickensian when he advocated in the mid-90s that the children of welfare recipients be placed in orphanages. He successfully trumped that one last month with his own modest proposal that “truly stupid” child labor laws be scrapped to allow poor kids to take over janitorial duties in schools. That would teach the little scamps the value of work and, as he put it, “fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America”. Suffer little children; the kingdom of heaven is gained through the lavatories.

Those Newtisms that don’t make it to the bracingly pragmatic or grandiosely loony bins often have the feel of the just tossed in, like a few sad radishes in a salad, usually in response to an opponent’s foray into new territory.

So it is with Gingrich’s tax provisions. Crafted or, rather, cobbled up on the tail of Cain’s catchy but vacuous 9-9-9 plan, it includes a 15% flat tax option, a decrease in the corporate income tax to 12.5% and, shockingly, an end to all capital tax gains. As Michael Mandel has shown in his fine assessment of the plan for The Atlantic, it would ensure not so much a trickle down from the richer to the poorer than a veritable gush up to the wealthiest.

But enough about the Newt: the man is a clown and it is possible he knows it. Then again, so are most of his foes under the big Republican tent, starting with the good Doctor Paul, a sinister Whiteface to Mr. Gingrich’s jocular Auguste, and the apostle of a miserly liberty, the freedom not to give a damn.

That would of course make Herman Cain this farcical court’s prancing jester, a role he’s shown himself a master at. To the redoubtable Michele Bachmann would go the trapeze bar for her ability to vault over the facts and contort the truth. As for Rick Perry, his rugged good looks and booming voice would have made for a dandy ringmaster if only he could be counted on to remember his opening lines.

This returns us inevitably to Mitt Romney, now back on top of the polls in volatile Iowa. While still notable for his garish flip-flops, which are largely to blame for his failure to close the deal with the more intransigent conservative voters, the former Bain executive is the only Republican candidate to have articulated, more or less and quite recently, a vision of what a post-Obama America would entail, one furthermore that would not involve a return to an eighteenth century of powdered wigs and silk stockings, or a space travel to a distant galaxy.

In a recent USA Today op-ed, Mr. Romney spells out the difference between the merit-based or “Opportunity Society” his administration would presumably return us to and what he calls the “Entitlement Society”which President Obama has apparently led us to:

In an Entitlement Society, government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to innovate or take risk. In an Opportunity Society, free people living under a limited government choose whether or not to pursue education, engage in hard work, and pursue the passion of their ideas and dreams. If they succeed, they merit the rewards they are able to enjoy.

We’ll leave to others the task of pointing out the enormous share of crude caricature in this statement, part of what Paul Krugman has aptly called Romney’s “post-truth” campaign, which suggests that Mr. Obama has been engaged all along in the blatant socialist goal of redistribution from the worthy to the undeserving.

As Thomas Edsall rightly pointed out, there is little here that diverges from what is by now well chewed rightwing fodder, and nor is Mitt Romney alone in shoveling it out. It does suggest however that, by making his pitch to that conservative element closely tied to the Tea Party that sees the world as divided between workers and parasitic spongers, even as they themselves often benefit from government largesse, Mr. Romney has tacked hard to the right, as many predicted he would need to given his plateaued approval ratings.

What is of pointed interest in Mr. Romney’s vision, though, is actually the question it begs about opportunity and choice. Opportunity, by definition, must be taken. It implies readiness. What then of those who are unwilling, unable, or not ready to do so?

The unwilling, presumably young and able, can be compelled to grab their chance by a further ratcheting of the Welfare rules set into place by President Clinton, even if it would be unseemly to do so without simultaneously providing them with the education that Mr. Romney believes they must choose to pursue, apparently irrespective of its prohibitive cost.

But what of those who are unable because they are disabled or injured, sick or aged? What should we as Americans do with those? Are they not deserving of our Christian kindness? Should not at least some of the money garnered from our taxes go to assist them, especially as simple charity has often failed at the task?

There is little, as Thomas Edsall writes, of compassionate conservatism in the new Romney strategy, one that he now hammers at every campaign stop. We know, certainly, that Mr. Romney’s sympathy does not extend to his pet which is reported to have ridden shackled to the family car’s roof on trips due north from Massachusetts. Nor does it of course tender to the many, we assume hard-working, employees laid off by Bain & Company in its restructuring labors. Perhaps those unable to purchase a ticket on the great American gravy train should just ride on its roof.

Mr. Romney is not yet out of the kitchen, this despite the endorsements of just about every establishment figure in the Grand Old Party. But the battle lines for the coming election are now sharply drawn and it is likely that we’re rushing headlong, to echo Edsall, into a brutal ideological conflict that has will put the very definition of what it is to be an American on the table.