This week's GOP presidential frontrunner, Herman Cain, appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday. I haven't watched video of the interview, but I have read the transcript. Host David Gregory is supposed to be one of the more intelligent Washington journalists. If he is, than this particular exchange doesn't say much for his intellect:

MR. GREGORY:  The other defect in the plan comes from fellow conservatives who say, "You've got some problems here." This is what The Wall Street Journal said about it this past week.  "The real political defect," the Journal writes, "of the Cain plan is that it imposes a new national sales tax while maintaining the income tax.  Mr. Cain's rates are seductively low, but the current income tax was introduced in 1913 with a top rate of 7 percent amid promises that it would never exceed 10 percent.  By 1918 the top rate was 77 percent.  The politics of a national sales tax is bad enough on its own.  A 9 percent rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17 percent or more in many places.  The cries for exemptions would be great."

MR. CAIN:  Don't combine it with state taxes.  This doesn't address state taxes.  If you add them together, yes, you'll get that number.  This is a replacement structure.  These are replacement taxes.  They're not on top of anything.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. CAIN:  We replace capital gains tax.  We replace the payroll tax.  We replace corporate income tax, replace personal income tax, and replace the death tax.  It is a replacement tax structure.

MR. GREGORY:  But where do state taxes go?  You're saying they're going to be repealed?

MR. CAIN:  If you--with the current structure, you have state taxes, right? So with this new structure, you're still going to have taxes--state taxes. That is muddying the water.

MR. GREGORY:  How so?

MR. CAIN:  Because today, under the current tax code, state taxes are there if they have it.  If they don't have a state taxes, they don't have it.  It has nothing to do with this replacement structure for the federal tax code.

MR. GREGORY:  But that doesn't make any sense to me.  If I'm already paying state taxes, and I have a new Cain administration national sales tax, I've got more state taxes.

Federalism anyone? Does Gregory seriously not understand that federal and state tax structures are separate?

I'm not sold on Cain's 9-9-9 plan. Analyses I've seen indicate that I'd probably come out a few hundred dollars ahead under the plan, but I am concerned both about the idea of a federal sales tax and the possibility that the poor will be far worse off under the plan.

At the same time, I do think that everyone should pay some federal taxes, even if it is just a nominal amount (and no, payroll taxes don't count).

I've also heard some concerns that Cain's plan to do away with the payroll tax would break the implied contract with regard to Social Security. "Oh no," they cry, "what will happen to Social Security trust fund? Benefits will be paid out of general revenues!" Good. That fiction should've been disappeared 40+ years ago when Washington started counting Social Security surpluses when determining whether the budget was balanced.