- April 25, 2024
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Vipin Verma
AGE: 25
FAMILY: single, no children
BIO: Vipin Verma lives and grew up in Daytona Beach. He went to Port Orange Elementary, Silver Sands Middle, and Spruce Creek High schools, in Port Orange. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the University of Florida. Upon graduation, he went to Florida State University Law School and graduated with honors. He was selected as the keynote speaker on behalf of all new lawyers at the induction ceremony for attaining highest bar exam score in 5th District Court of Appeals in Florida. He is licensed to practice law in Florida and Illinois, and has his own law practice in Daytona Beach.
What would you do to balance the budget?
The first step is to get the economy back working. Here’s how you do it: First step is you need to invest heavily in infrastructure projects. … The second step is we need to focus and rebuild our manufacturing sector. But we have to be careful what sector we want to bring in. There are countries out there that work for minimum wage, and if you try to compete with China, let’s say, making plastic cups, you’re not going to be very successful. But if you look at the high-tech industry, robotics, biomedical research, nanotechnologies, just the new-age fields, and especially with the space technologies and if you go up north with the defense technologies; if you focus on those industries, high-tech industries, and you lure these companies in, you can do it with very little cost, and here’s how you structure it: You tell these companies, let’s say we’re going to give them three-year tax credits on all their profits. …
There are the corporations holding trillions of dollars of capital outside the United States. You tell them to bring back your own capital, so the government’s not investing anything, and invest in your local communities, open new manufacturing plants. … Countries like China — that’s what they do to lure a lot of the capital in; that’s why a lot of the capital has been going away from the United States to these countries. …
And the next thing we really need to focus on is corporate tax reform. There’s a lot of tax loopholes that the lobbyists and special interests have put in just for themselves. So you broaden the tax base and lower the rate for all the corporations and the small businesses, and especially give small businesses the tax credits, and then try to take out some of those loopholes, try to even the rate so a small business owner’s not paying more taxes than GE or some of these other big corporations. …
You’re going to balance the budget by growing our economy. And that does include cuts. We’ve got to find the places where we can cut, but the main emphasis should be on growth.
Would you be willing to pledge not to raise taxes?
I will not sign a pledge saying we’re not going to raise any taxes. We’re talking about going back to the tax code under President Clinton. That’s the president’s proposal, and I agree with that proposal. Keep the tax cuts for the middle class because they’ve been hammered by this recession. And for the wealthy, we gave them the tax credits when we could; right now we just can’t afford it. …
If you’re asked to raise the national debt ceiling, how would you vote? How would you propose to reduce the national debt?
When you’re raising the debt ceiling, you’re not saying we’re agreeing to new spending. I think that’s where Congress went wrong and where a lot of the Republicans went wrong. They wanted to have a real debate about the federal deficit. … We have to promise to pay back our obligations. Our country can’t survive without doing that. …
And then with the Affordable Care Act, it’s been upheld as constitutional; you’re going to get a lot more people under the system, and the cost of health care should go down because a lot of people are not going to be going to the emergency room. …
What would you do with the federal tax code? Where do you stand on the subject of a flat tax?
You keep basic minimum deductions for a child, mortgage or interest deduction — the basic things for middle class families — and simplify the tax code. …
Any time you start walking away from the progressive system and try to flatten the tax code, instead of becoming a true flat tax, it starts to become regressive. … You cannot penalize a person more if they make less money, and that’s essentially what happens because you’re going to start taxing that person making $25,000 a year, let’s say, at 15%. That’s a lot of money to a person making that amount of money, where they pay the whole (salary) just to pay for necessities. Whereas if you tax someone, let’s say 20% to a person making $1 million a year, they can afford the extra 5% … and that’s where I have a problem with the flat tax.
What are you willing to do to reform Medicaid and Medicare?
The Affordable Care Act should help bring down the cost. I definitely do not agree with the Paul Ryan budget, in which he wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program. I am strongly opposed to that because what you’re essentially saying to our seniors is this: You’re on your own. You’re going to have the voucher for $6,000 and I just urge your readers to go to the Blue Cross Blue Shield website, put your age and get a quote. You’re going to quickly see that they won’t be able to insure you for $6,000. So what do you do, how do you make up the difference?
If you look at the statistics, a lot of seniors are below the poverty line without factoring in Social Security. The only reason they’re staying afloat and they’re not homeless is because they get a Social Security check and they get Medicare, so essentially they’re able to pay for their health care costs. And that’s why the Affordable Care Act was a very important step.
