Tuesday, January 31, 2006

For REAL tax reform,
consider The Fair Tax


I've wanted to do a post about the Fair Tax for a while now. Neil Boortz made a post today about how our tax code is strangling our nation, slowly collapsing our economy with an onerous tax system that punishes the very activities our economy needs.

Neal explains:

...Look at the list of issues. Trade deficit. Disappearing manufacturing jobs. Low savings rate. Tax reform is the answer to all of these problems. Sure, I favor the FairTax. It is the only tax reform proposal I've seen that addresses so many of the issues we are dealing with. Our current tax code is one that was designed by and for the benefit of politicians and lobbyists. It punishes achievement and rewards laziness. It punishes the voting blocks unimportant to politicians, and rewards voting blocks who keep them in office. Above all, the tax codes gives thousands of high-income Beltway lobbyists their fertile territory for exchanging campaign donations for changes in the tax code to benefit their clients.

The president appointed a tax reform commission. I don't know how much money they spent, but whatever it was, it was a waste. This failure of a commission merely recommended a repeat of 1986. Get rid of more deductions, set up a few flat tax rates, and let 'er rip. That's the 1986 tax reform act all over again, and as soon as it was passed the lobbyists went to work. That bill has now been amended and changed around 10,000 times, and nothing is better.

OK, I know I've been hammering this, but about 11 days ago there was a story in the Washington Post about the lack of Republican agenda. The story said that Republican congressmen were hearing from their constituents on gas prices and on the FairTax. One congressman, Zach Wamp from Tennessee, even "lamented" the fact that people are more interested in the FairTax than they are in changing Washington. Can it truly be that these politicians don't understand that the FairTax is all about changing Washington? Of course they realize it, that's why they're not on board! They know that passage of the FairTax would constitute a massive transfer of power from the inside to outside of the Beltway. These politicians want you to be taxed when they decide you should be taxed, not when you chose to be taxed. They want the control, and the FairTax takes that control away. They want to tell you how much you can save tax-free, not leave that decision up to you...


If we don't want to end up like a weak and stagnant socialist europe, we need to alter our course now. The Fair Tax is well worth considering.

You can read more of Neal's post HERE.

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