It's been tried, marginal candidates run all the time. And lose.
And yammering about "abolishing the income tax" isn't a proposal without details about how the revenue will be replaced, and what cuts will be made.
I'll play though, Wikipedia is good enough for this exercise.
By eliminating the income tax without a replacement, you've just dropped federal revenues from $2.2 trillion to just over $1 trillion. You're going to continue Social Security and Medicare, you've got $122 billion left to run the government.
Scrapping SS and Medicare, you save $890 billion in expenses, but lose $818 billion in tax revenue. If Paul prefers that approach, he should be honest about throwing grandma off the train, he's got about $195 billion to run the government.
So tell me, how is President Paul going to run the government on $122 to $195 billion?
What goes, what does he keep.
BTW, I'm assuming we default on our debt, if Ron pays the interest, he's got nothing left to run the government.
Paul is a curmudgeon good for sound bites and nothing more. The classic empty suit.
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Total Receipts
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2006 are $2.2 trillion. This expected income is broken down by the following sources:
The President's budget for 2006 totals $2.6 trillion. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:
I only see 4 issues even remotely covered by the Constitution. The rest was intended to be left up to the separate and sovereign states. And if you think only $38 billion was spent on foreign aid, I've got this great seaside property in Montana you might be interested in. The interest on debt would be erased as the budget goes in the same fashion. Rep. Paul has made it clear some of what he wants will take time. But through vetoes, it will force Congress to cut government just to overcome a veto.
Let's say he cuts 10% of 2 trillion the first two years. As I suggested as his message of liberty gets out, more challengers come to the forefront for Congressional seats that agree with his positions. As that group of elected officials grows (which will take continued campaign work for those of us that still believe in limited government), the budget will have to be cut even further to overcome a Paul veto.
Paul is a curmudgeon good for sound bites and nothing more. The classic empty suit.
And yet we still come down to slurs. Why? Perhaps because the idea of limited government isn't even your concern (which I highly believe is the case). Perhaps it's because Republicans are more concerned with remaining in power to advocate their big government programs instead of the other guy's. Maybe it's because you don't actually have an argument against 98% of his positions. Don't know, don't care. What I do know is that Rep. Paul has brought a lot of us back into the game that had given up on what's left of the Republic and were prepared to sit on the sidelines watching the slide down into the annals of history. He's also vitalized a group of young people (many hard conservatives ideologues) who believed the bunk their parents told them about changing the world.