“That’s awesome,’’ Bachmann responded. “You will be happy to know that a colleague of mine from Texas, [Representative] Louie Gohmert, gave that suggestion.’’
Bachmann said Gorman’s prediction about the proposal’s effect on the economy was on target. “If we would have allowed every American to take that much more money home in their pockets, what would they have done?’’ Bachmann said. “They would have paid their bills. They would have spent it. They would have grown their businesses. They would have grown the economy.’’
But Gohmert’s proposal was not exactly what Gorman suggested. Gohmert, a Republican, gave up his advocacy of a yearlong income tax moratorium after it received little support from colleagues.
He proposed his measure in January 2009, as Congress was debating whether to release $350 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. His bill would have given that money to workers rather than government-selected companies by putting a two-month moratorium on payroll taxes and excluding income earned during those months from the income tax. Any loss to the Social Security trust fund would have been made up with TARP money. Since the bill never made it out of committee, there is no government estimate of its economic impact.
Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said advocates of a tax moratorium in 2009 said it might have stimulated the economy more than a stimulus program, but today the idea of a one-year income tax holiday is not being discussed because of its cost. Without the tax, the deficit would rise from $1.7 trillion to $2.7 trillion this year, Dubay said. Bachmann has been a leading advocate for cutting the debt and deficit. Her campaign did not respond to a request to clarify her stance on the income tax.
