Dan Calabrese

If you dread dealing with the TSA as you go through the airport, it’s just too bad for you that you’re not Herman Cain these days. Nothing succeeds like success, and the winner of last weekend’s Florida Straw Poll gets the sense from people that he’s on to something – because his momentum is based on a substantive idea that folks can understand.

“We left yesterday to go to New York for a fundraiser,” Cain told me on Wednesday. “After I put my stuff on the belt and it came through on the other side, there was a TSA agent standing there. The guy says, ‘Hello, Mr. Cain. 9-9-9!’”

The 9-9-9 plan, of course, is Cain’s proposal to overhaul the U.S. tax code. In place of the complicated myriad of taxes with which we struggle to comply today, Cain would institute a simple, three-pronged system:

- A 9 percent business flat tax on gross income less all investments and purchases from other businesses. Cain would end the double taxation of dividends.

- A 9 percent individual income flat tax, which would apply to all gross income less charitable contributions. No other deductions would be allowed.

- A 9 percent national sales tax.

It’s so simple, you could explain it in an interview on Jay Leno. In fact, Cain intends to do that very thing tonight when he appears on The Tonight Show.

“I can explain it in a minute,” Cain said. “Romney can’t explain his plan in a minute. It’s 160 pages. It’s politics as usual and I’m going to go after him and Perry in the next debate about that fact.”

To Cain, the real value of the 9-9-9 plan is not just that it resonates politically. It’s that he’s convinced it will be the balm a hurting economy sorely needs. Not only does it simplify the tax code – eliminating the need for taxpayers and business to constantly alter their behavior in pursuit of tax advantages – but it also treats individual income and business revenue more favorably, while making a third of the tax formula completely voluntary in the sense that people only pay on what they choose to buy.

He does not presume to be able to “create jobs” with his plan, as Cain’s background in business – he was a top executive at Pillsbury and CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain – instructs him on the real nature of how and why employment opportunities occur. But he is confident it will help create the right conditions for the nation’s devastating 9.1 percent unemployment to abate.

“First of all, government can’t create jobs,” Cain said. “The business sector creates jobs when businesses grow, and 9-9-9 encourages and inspires businesses to grow. That’s how the 9-9-9 plan does it. It does it first by providing one of the lowest business tax rates on the planet. And you pass this with certainty. In other words, if the Democrats say, ‘Let’s pass this for a two-year trial period,’ I will veto it. Uncertainty is killing this economy.”

Cain has been making that case for some time in his weekly newspaper column. He railed against the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, not because he wanted the rates raised but because he hears from business leaders all the time that they can’t make long-term decisions without knowing what will happen with tax policy in the near term.

“I have the business community demanding that we don’t pass some temporary crap,” Cain said. “9-9-9 not only creates a business-friendly environment, it will boost economic growth. I don’t use the word stimulate.”

Cain also believes the 9-9-9 plan can be used as the basis for an idea he hopes will spur urban renewal. (Seriously . . . a Republican talking about urban issues. Take a second to wait for the room to stop spinning.) In a few weeks, Cain plans to unveil a concept for urban empowerment zones in which the 9s would be replaced by lower numbers. He is not ready to commit to 8-8-8, 7-7-7 or anything else specific because he’s still got his tax policy advisors running the numbers to see what would work. But he is convinced the idea can help bring about economic revival in the areas that most desperately need it.

“The economy is on life support, and you have some cities and some communities where it’s not even on life support,” Cain said. “They’ve disconnected the tubing and they’re dying. How about Detroit? Because 9-9-9 is so simple, we can create empowerment zone incentives for whole cities in a way that you couldn’t do with the existing tax code. You’d have to go through too much work to figure out how you’d do it.”

Because such an empowerment zone would cut taxes on business revenue, individual income and consumer spending, Cain is convinced it would provide a major economic boost to cities like Detroit.

So far, 9-9-9 plan is providing a major boost to his campaign. It’s still a long road to the nomination, but Cain has said all along that the voters will support good ideas as long as they understand them. He appears to have his chance to prove it.

4 Responses to “Herman Cain on his 9-9-9 plan: ‘We’ll have the lowest business taxes on the planet’”