The usual maelstrom of the presidential election cycle – the great cacophony of poignant ads, caustic jabs and combative intensity that pervades both sides of the political aisle – has reached its crux. On Sept. 26 at 9 p.m., the presidential debates begin at Hofstra University with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt moderating.
Usually, the debates are conceivably irrelevant; the party lines are strictly penned in permanent ink across America’s voting body, and almost nothing that the candidates say on TV will change those demographics. Usually, Republicans and Democrats alike will warily monitor the debates for more gaffes and fodder to launch at one another before the election itself, and nothing more.
However, this year’s election is different from almost any other in American history. The Republicans are struggling through a schism brought about by Donald Trump’s divisive rise to the party’s nomination, while Democrats perform damage control for Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and health scares.
A recent poll by the Huffington Post shows that, according to American voters, both candidates are considered the worst put forth by the two major political parties in the last 40 years. The campaign itself has been bleak for both sides, and the chaos has exposed a yearning of the American people to have a third-party representative.
If only there was a candidate whose views were centrist, who upheld the Constitution without trampling social issues under their feet, who basically seemed like an intelligent and comprehensible human being not completely distorted by either temptatious aisle rooted in Washington.
Well, America, luckily this candidate exists, and his name is Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.
Most people vaguely know the general idea of libertarianism: fiscally conservative policies with a government as limited as can be, but socially receptive of new ideas as long as they are not forced upon any particular group of people. Johnson’s social platform is similar to Bernie Sanders’ in that he supports same-sex marriage, full legalization of marijuana, unrestricted abortion rights for women and granting a path to full citizenship for illegal aliens.
Johnson also believes in a mostly non-interventionist policy for the U.S. military, meaning that he wishes to redact our offensive presence in the world in order to allow our astronomical debt to balance and reduce, and to begin undoing the years of underlying damage and destabilization done to the Middle East by U.S. involvement. Johnson is proposing a 43 percent cut to our top-ranked $618.7 billion military budget, which would still be $352.7 billion a year – over double the $171.4 billion budget of China.
The idea guiding his proposed cuts is to limit our offensive presence without sacrificing our overall militaristic machismo, and to also seek better use of our military alliances in order to help lower the financial burden of protecting mutual interests.
However, his proposed ideas on policy should not imply an entirely “soft” foreign stance. Johnson simply believes that having the biggest stick does not require using it to put pressure on every single situation that comes upon the global stage. He supports the idea of a declaration of war against ISIS, for example, in the name of all the victims who have been terrorized, threatened or killed by the group these last few years.
Johnson is also a huge proponent of private enterprise, and he believes it is not the government’s prerogative to create jobs but rather to facilitate growth in the job sector through providing a profitable market for small businesses to flourish. This would involve the abolishment of the IRS, and with it, income taxes and payroll taxes, and instead establishing a federal tax on all purchased goods at a rate of roughly 23 percent. Basically, his plan would raise the overall cost of standard goods, but it would save families an astonishing amount of their salary out in the world through the removal of income tax brackets.
The tax brackets work as income checkpoints, where one is taxed at a marginal rate depending on how much taxable income they have accrued at any given point of a fiscal year. There are seven U.S. tax brackets – 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, 35 percent and 39.6 percent – based on total earnings in a year, and three different guidelines for those seven brackets based upon the taxpayer’s standing in the home.
However, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say there are only three brackets of 10 percent, 20 percent and 30 percent, and John Doe makes a $75,000 annual salary. The first bracket would apply to the first $20,000 John would make, which is taxed at 10 percent for $2,000. The second bracket would be between $20,000 and $50,000 – or the next $30,000 of his income – and is taxed at 20 percent, or $6,000 of his earnings. The last bracket would be above $50,000 in earnings, which is taxed at 30 percent and would mean John’s last $25,000 of his salary would be taxed for $7,500.
Overall, John automatically loses $15,500 of his income without ever seeing a penny of it, which effectively makes his salary $59,500. Though this scenario is only hypothetical, the process it describes reflects the general ideology behind our tax code. The government automatically takes a portion of your pay as soon as it is conceived, regardless of what you do or plan to do with your money.
Johnson wants to abolish this concept for the way it robs the American consumer from reaching their full buying power. Imagine how much of a difference this plan would make for John Doe if he could keep an extra $15,500 a year, while paying only $0.45 more for a gallon of milk or $45 more for a new Xbox One. Working in conjunction with the proposed cuts to the military budget, Johnson’s economic plan would begin to reverse our constantly rising debt while also cutting taxes that handicap both the growth of small businesses and the average American consumer.
How smart! What better way to kickstart the economy – which is defined as “the wealth and resources of a country or region especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services” – than by enabling consumers to spend more of their money out in the world on goods and services?
At the very least, it sounds like a plan, and a relevant and sensical plan is the most important aspect missing in this election. With the debates on the horizon, a rare opportunity sits before the American people to bring a seemingly competent candidate to a national audience. Simply put, neither of the major political parties have really offered a plausible solution to the issues that are facing our country, including our crippling debt and litany of foreign policy dilemmas. Instead, both have become a part of the problem or, perhaps, even the problem itself.
If nothing else, Johnson’s policy ideas sound like sane, properly developed and well-reasoned proposals, which is much more than what Clinton or Trump have offered the voters thus far.
While the entertainment value of watching a boorish bag of hot air, topped off with an angry red toupee, duking it out with the second coming of Dolores Umbridge on national TV is quite rollicking by itself, the general consensus is that neither of these candidates have said, done, or proposed almost anything that makes them appear as capable presidents. Therefore, it is imperative that a calmer, more responsible candidate takes the stage so that the American people can at least see an alternative from this monumental political fiasco.
Scott Vogel is a second-year student majoring in English. He can be reached at SV845618@wcupa.edu.