The Coburn legislation makes housing benefits taxable but gives everyone a new government-paid housing voucher, worth the same amount for everyone. Soon the younger employees begin to notice that their pay stubs are showing an inordinately large amount of taxable income being deducted to pay for their small cottages. So they begin to demand their housing allowance in cash. The new government voucher is more than enough to pay for comfortable housing, so they are able to move into more expensive luxury neighborhoods while still banking part of the voucher, and pocketing much of the employer’s housing allowance.

For the older employees, the housing allowance is not nearly enough to cover the actual cost of their large estates, so the company eventually evicts the remaining employees and sells off all of its employee housing, forcing everyone to accept their housing allowance as taxable income. The older employees try to find senior housing adequate to their needs, but find that even when combining the added income with the tax credit, there is still not enough to pay for comparable housing. They are forced to make up the difference on their own, or else move into substandard housing or bunk with friends or relatives.

That’s what qualifies as an argument in opposition to the Republican plan? — which the CBO says would lower Americans insurance premiums while costing less than 5% as much in its real first ten years as the Democratic plans would cost in their real first ten years (2013-22 for the House bill, 2014-23 for the Senate)?

In response to John Graham…

You didn’t state the whole “alternate reality.” Now (in that reality) the Democrats are trying to nationalize the whole housing market and provide public housing for all — incrementally, to be sure, but irreversably. Republicans control about 40% of Congress and don’t have control of the White House, and yet some of their members say, “Wait — we have a major reform agenda of our own. Pick ours!”

Other Republicans, actually being cognizant of the political landscape, devote their energies to preventing this alternate reality from becoming an alternate nightmare. They say, “Why nationalize housing when you can just allow people to shop for things related to their home from outside of their home state, cut the waste from excessive real-estate lawsuits, and allow sellers to offer better prices to buyers with better credit?” (none of which can be done in this alternate status quo). They continue: “That would make things noticeably better, not dramatically worse. It wouldn’t fundamentally overhaul the system, but it would improve it and help dissuade others from ruining the system. In stopping that threat, it would leave open the option for further, more ambitious reforms down the line.”

And you’re saying its the latter group of Republicans that lacks “brilliance”?