Bruin Democrats and Bruin Republicans convened at a “Occupy Wall Street?” debate Wednesday night to discuss the two economic issues central to the growing political movement ““ tax policy and unemployment insurance extensions.
At the beginning of the debate, each side gave a brief summary of its stance on the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the debate mainly focused on the policy issues fueling the political movement.
The debate was split into two parts. For both issues, each side was given a seven-minute period to outline its respective stance and a five-minute rebuttal to respond to the opposing side’s argument.
On tax policy reform, the Bruin Democrats echoed the perspective of current liberal leadership, advocating for a progressive tax rate that would place a greater revenue burden on the wealthiest Americans to spur economic growth.
To illustrate the point, Kenneth Rebella, a debater for Bruin Democrats and a third-year political science student, said it was “absurd” that wealthy people, such as millionaire basketball star LeBron James, paid taxes at the same rate as his dentist.
Bruin Republicans, meanwhile, advocated an additional mandatory 0.5 percent payroll flat tax for all taxpayers. By using U.S. Census Bureau calculations, this new flat tax would generate a yearly $28.5 billion that would go directly to alleviate the national debt, said debater JoLynn Earl, a third-year business economics student.
“We don’t dispute that the revenue generated from this flat tax is insignificant compared to our massive debt, but the flat tax would be used to incentivize people to encourage congress to balance our budget,” Earl said.
In their proposed plan, the Bruin Republicans said the tax would be automatically eliminated once the national debt is 15 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product.
Despite some disagreements on policy, the two sides did find common ground during the debate.
When discussing unemployment benefits, the two teams agreed that unemployment benefits are important for society.
However, they disagreed on how long benefits should be offered.
While the Bruin Democrats favored continued extensions to unemployment benefits, the Bruin Republicans argued that repeated extensions would put an unfair burden on American businesses.
On tax policy, both sides advocated for added tax brackets, elimination of loopholes and a broadening of the tax base.
The central dispute was what tax rate policy would be most effective in spurring economic growth and reducing the unemployment rate.
“The campus Democrats and the Republicans come to these debates with completely different views on how the economy should intrinsically operate,” said Amanda Silver-Westerick, a fourth-year environmental studies student and external vice president for the Bruin Democrats.
“There was a lot of common ground. And the things we disagree on aren’t completely impossible to overcome.”