Thanks to some quick checking by The Washington Post, it now appears that the consultants who wrote the analysis of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan was a small West Bloomfield investment firm.
At Tuesday night’s debate, as the other presidential candidates launched a barrage of salvos at Cain’s plan, Cain repeatedly responded that critics should go to his web site and read the analysis offered there.He offered little additional defense for the plan, which looks especially weak in retrospect because the analysis was written by the rather obscure firm of Fiscal Associates, located just off of Orchard Lake Road near Maple Road.
The five-person company specializes in personal investments, individual financial planning, not national economic policy. The analysis they apparently wrote for Cain’s campaign, which was just completed in September, is a fairly brief 10-page report with no graphs or charts.
Their web site is loaded with cheery sales pitches and cheesy generic “family” photos purchased from some marketing firm. 

Ezra Klein of the Post, who traced the origin of the 9-9-9 analysis, offered these comments about Fiscal Associates on his blog today:
“’Matching your Resources to Your Goals and Lifestyle’ their website promises in a tasteful, tan, and seemingly randomly capitalized script. There is no evidence that anyone at the firm has any experience estimating the revenue effects of tax-reforms proposals. And somewhat oddly, the analysis Cain posted from them has the word ‘draft’ emblazoned on the bottom of every page. Confidence inspiring stuff.”
Cain had previously said 9-9-9 (the percentage rate he would set for the income tax, corporate tax and a new national sales tax) was an idea presented to him by an accountant from Cleveland. The media soon discovered that the inventor of 9-9-9 is also associated with a small, rather obscure firm and he has no experience dealing with macroeconomics or federal tax policy.

Here’s more of what Klein wrote:
“… Even the draft analysis doesn’t tell us much. What we need to know to decide whether the plan will raise taxes on those making the least is what tax wonks call “a distributional estimate” — an estimate of what different income groups will pay under the new proposal. There’s no such estimate in the Fiscal Associates draft, … no estimate of how many taxpayers would pay more and how many taxpayers would pay less under Cain’s plan.”
Fortunately, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington released an objective, comprehensive analysis of 9-9-9 yesterday and found that Cain is wrong-wrong-wrong. After crunching the numbers, the Tax Policy Center concluded that only those making six figures would benefit from the tax changes. The poorest workers would see their taxes jump by 20 percent, while millionaires would enjoy a 15 percent cut.

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