Perhaps we can take Dick Armey and his flat tax buddies to the FairTax woodshed?
I have been dueling with him since the Tauzin Armey debates of the mid 1990s. FRankly, Bigun, I am still amazed that he doesn’t “get it.” I mean, after all, surely he doesn’t much care for the IRS. And, surely, he stands for FReedom, doesn’t he?
What is FRee about a tax system that retains the, as noted many times over, very abusive IRS?
It is high time we put the notion of a “flat income tax” to bed!
We will never be a FRee people as long as we have an income tax and an IRS!
I've had some pretty spectacular run ins with Mr. Armey myself over the years my FRiend and don't think nearly as highly of him as you seem to.
He is a million dollar a year lobbyist now you know and the ONLY way he can preserve that is to preserve the income tax so we will never put the income tax to bed if Mr. Armey and his ilk can prevent it.
They knew it was a freedom issue rather than a fiscal one at the time the 16th amendment was proposed but there were too few willing to stand against it.
"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man's counting house . . . The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hailed into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state . . . Who of us who have had knowledge of the doings of the Federal officials in the Internal Revenue service can be blind to what will follow?"
Virginia House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting what would happen if a federal income tax became law.