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Credit: Washington Post/Tax Policy Center

Herman Cain's now ubiquitous 9-9-9 tax plan went from the ridiculous to the sublime during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate. While House Republicans and Grover Norquist had complained that the pizza mogul's proposals constituted a tax increase, some of Cain's fellow White House hopefuls actually expressed concern that it would be lower and middle income Americans paying it.

And that is a very shocking development, indeed. After all, while he differs in his particulars, Herman Cain like Paul Ryan and George W. Bush would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy. And like the Ryan budget voted for by 98 percent of Capitol Hill Republicans, the 9-9-9 plan would dramatically shift the tax burden to lower income Americans.

This week, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center added its devastating analysis to the growing list of negative assessments of the Cain 9-9-9 plan. Cain's opponents seized on it to punish him throughout last night's CNN debate. "The worst part about it," Congressman Ron Paul fretted, "It's regressive. Rick Santorum explained why:

"[R]eports are now out that 84 percent of Americans would pay more taxes under his plan. That's the analysis. And it makes sense, because when -- when you don't provide a standard deduction, when you don't provide anything for low-income individuals, and you have a sales tax and an income tax and, as Michele said, a value-added tax, which is really what his corporate tax is, we're talking about major increases in taxes on people."

Which is exactly right. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein showed using TPC data, while raising taxes on most Americans Cain's payday to the richest is literally off the charts. As Klein explained today, "One problem with trying to graph the 9-9-9 plan is that the tax cuts for the rich are so large that it's hard to see what the policy is doing to the poor and the middle class. That's why I posted a table [above] rather than a chart earlier."

That's what necessarily happens when you cut the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 9 percent, eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit for working Americans, and zero out the capital gains tax. (According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, two-thirds of all capital gains are reported by those with incomes over $1 million.) As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger put it:

"[Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan] would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere."

Bigger even than the Paul Ryan budget passed by House Republicans in April. Just not by much.

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As Ronald Reagan's budget chief almost thirty years ago, a frustrated David Stockman famously lamented that when it comes to spending discipline, "there are no real conservatives in Congress." Now, three decades after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," Stockman called the Republican demand for another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, "unconscionable." As well he should. With the new GOP majority's financial toxic brew of gargantuan tax giveaways and still unnamed spending cuts, the Free Lunch Party has returned.

In truth, it never really left. As Stockman experienced first-hand, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's M.C. Escher-like pledge to slash taxes, raise defense spending and balance the budget produced a torrent of red in that exceeded that of the previous 200 plus years of American history combined.

But conservative propagandists soon forgot Stockman's "magic asterisk" and Reagan's subsequent tax increases, neither of which could stop the record budget deficits he produced. After the Clinton balanced budget hiatus in the 1990's, George W. Bush doubled the national debt yet again. As explained in "The Bush Tax Cuts in Pictures," President Bush's Free Lunch dream predictably turned into a budgetary nightmare:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demolished the mythology promoted by President Bush ("You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase") and the usual suspects on the right. CBPP found that Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure.

And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together.

(Worse still, the Bush tax cuts also coincided with an increase in poverty and a decline in Americans' average household income.)

And now, at a time of record budget deficits and record income inequality, Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell want to make the expiring Bush tax cuts permanent. The leading lights of the GOP still insist that draining $4 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over the next 10 years (including that $700 billion payday for the richest 2%) doesn't cost a cent.

For his part, this summer John Boehner wrongly claimed, "It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit." In July, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the second ranking Senate Republican made the same point another way, telling Chris Wallace of Fox News, "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Aborted Obama Commerce nominee Judd Gregg (R-NH) soon chimed in, declaring "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset." For his part, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained how tax cuts magically turn red ink black:

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Glenn Beck has become a cartoon. You can pretty much guarantee that every afternoon, you can tune in and find Beck saying something so stupidly outrageous, so detached from reality, so unhinged in its lunacy, that you just have to shake your head. It's not really a very funny cartoon, though.

Yesterday he treated us all to a long rant about how liberals are indoctrinating our children with inhuman values that are OK with letting grandma die at the hands of death panels, or something. "We have raised a generation of potential killers," he warned, inspired by a letter to the editor from a young woman who wants health-care reform for her generation especially. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing as pushing for euthanasia.

Beck, obviously, hears strange things when he listens to other people -- things they don't actually say. Instead, they seem to be edited by the voices inside his head.

He featured a later segment with right-wing economist Arthur Laffer -- one of the progenitors of Reaganomics -- who tells Beck all the damage could be repaired overnight with just a simple injection of Reagan-style economics. Of course, Laffer neglects to mention that G.W. Bush followed his economic prescriptions (especially those tax cuts for the wealthy, and the deregulation of the financial sector) to the letter, too -- and we can see where that got us.

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But Beck concludes anyway that Obama is marching us right into a Soviet-style decline and crumble:

Beck: Did you ever read Pravda?

Laffer: I did read Pravda, as a matter of fact.

Beck: Did you read that? Where they're like, 'What is wrong with the Republicans?' We're watching what happened to Russia -- Pravda gives us more truth than the American press!

He's referring, of course, the Igor Panarin's dire predictions of the fall of America, which, so far, have proven laughably wrong.

Indeed, Panarin is actually just a classic Russian propagandist, engaged in the process of explaining to his readers why post-Soviet rule has not exactly been a smashing success -- by claiming that the USA is about to go into a similar decline.

We had no idea Beck was such a fan of post-Soviet propaganda. Quick, someone alert Glenn Beck and see if he can do another of his McCarthyite exposes.

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

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