The Oh, Hello and

welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

Two segments today in Moments Max Swicky will talk about Republican ideas for

overhauling the federal tax system, not that they can ever agree on anything, and

V.J. Parshad will offer an in-depth analysis of the Syrian disaster.

First, taxes.

Republicans control all three branches of government.

They're full of ideas on how to make the federal tax system work better for corporations and rich people,

but can they ever make them happen?

Here's the Virginia-based economist and writer Max Suicki.

He's recently launched blog written

with veteran political reporter Bob Dreyfus is at the populist dot buzz. First I

learn there's a buzz domain. Max Suwicky. Welcome Max Max. We've got a lot of tax proposals floating around the Republican universe.

I suppose the first question is, do any of them stand the slightest possibility of becoming a law?

Or are they just, there's a party too

divided. There's always an appetite for tax cuts. Just as on the health care

issue there was an appetite to hurt Obamacare some way or another. The problem is that when you get to something

that's technical and complicated like this and they are competing underlying interests, then it could be difficult for them to agree on an

actual tax cut. By them I mean the Republican side. There was kind of an intra-Republican or intra-wig nut war around the

first proposal that came down the pike the so-called border adjustment tax which

now seems to be dead so I think it's safe to expect there'll be

similar disputes around other proposals.

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