Caroline Baum: It Takes A Tea Party To Start A Tax Revolution
By
Email To A Friend
Print This Article
Caroline Baum posted a great article on Bloomberg.com on August 15th, 2010 and it is instructive.
First, she reminds each of us that We, The People give Congress the power to levy and collect taxes. However:
There’s nothing in there about carving out special exemptions for certain individuals or groups; about using tax credits to achieve socially desirable outcomes, such as getting married and having children; or about doling out earmarks in an implicit exchange for campaign contributions.
How can we get Congress out of the tax-favor business?
We need new rules (a constitutional amendment), a new framework (independent commissions) or a new crop of lawmakers with the political will to look beyond the next election and solve the country’s fiscal problems.
She goes on to explain why previous tax simplification efforts have failed:
Efforts at tax simplification, such as the implementation of two flat rates (14 percent and 28 percent) and the elimination of many loopholes in 1986, tend to be short-lived.
Why? For the simple reason that Congress likes using the tax code to dispense favors. Lawmakers may disagree over whether political spending by corporations constitutes free speech (the Supreme Court says it does), but they let money speak to them loud and clear. We must stop them before they kill (the economy) again.
She then offers up at least three alternative ways the change we really need could be achieved.
- Constitutional Amendment Via Congress
- Very hard and unlikely given Congress’s preference to use tax code to grant favors to preferred constituents.
- Constitutional Amendment Via State Legislatures
- Still difficult, but not impossible given that the National Taxpayers Union only came up two states short of the required number to pass a balanced budget amendment.
- Privatization Of Tax Policy
- Again, very difficult since it would require Congress to relinquish their Constitutional authority to set and levy taxes, but it could turn out to work well since it would probably immediately bring some uniformity to the tax code which is currently riddled with loopholes.
In the end, none of the possibilities Caroline Baum or anyone else has proposed amount to a hill of beans without one critical component: The Will Of The People. Without a loud and clear statement from the people about the direction they want to proceed and without action on the part of the people to remove the obsticles (read: Congressmen and women who are against the new ideas), nothing will be done. Nature abhors a vacuum and without clear leadership on the part of the people to guide elected officials, nothing will be done to change the current system and the current system will continue to be unfair and get worse over time.
As Baum says:
It took a Tea Party in Boston in 1773 to put the British on notice. Maybe it will take the modern day equivalent to get Washington’s attention.
Related Posts:
Email To A Friend
Print This Article
Loading ...
