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Presidential candidate Fred Thompson has released his tax “and economic” proposal. The reason for the quotations is that the proposal has nary a mention of actual economic proposals other than “cut taxes good, Democrats bad”.

The proposal would extend President Bush’s tax cuts, repeal the Estate Tax, repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, reduce the Corporate tax rate, permanently extend the IRC §179 election, “simplify and expand” depreciation, and allow individuals to either pay the current tax or a new simplified tax.

How will he pay for it? By cutting government waste, of course! He doesn’t have any actual proposals for what departments and programs to cut, but I’m sure they are there somewhere. Half the budget is entitlements, so he can’t cut there. Another 25% is defense, and we know no Republican will cut there. I’m sure the other 25% of the Federal government just isn’t that important and can be entirely eliminated, right?

Anyway, the proposal to simplify the individual income tax is a step in the right direction, as is permanently eliminating the AMT (see my prior AMT coverage here, here, and here). I would keep the Estate Tax around, but make the exemption much higher. The depreciation rules are not really all that complex and I don’t see why they need to be simplified very much (I’m guessing “simplify” means further acceleration).

I guess the tax “and economic” plan has passed through all of the focus groups and can now be put out there for public consumption. But like all of the tax cut plans that the candidates have put forth they have not said how they will pay for the cuts beyond eliminating “government waste”. Without some measure of how to pay for the cuts other than pushing more debt onto future generations, I certainly won’t be giving a second thought to any of their tax plans as I try to navigate who I should vote for next year.