Why? Because over 50% of Americans don't pay any income taxes. Over 20% get refunds - they get paid to file taxes! They don't care what the government does, because they don't pay for it - the other 50% does. (5% top taxpayers pay 70% of all income taxes!). Free health care - sure; expanded medicare - sure. I read that in the 1980’s about 30% of Americans were receiving some sort of gov’t aid; that number to rise over 60% under this Administration. We simply cannot afford it.
The only way to get out of our ridiculously progressive taxation in this country is to tax people on what they consume - consume more - pay more; consume less - pay less. You control it.
Of course, the fallacy of my argument is that adults run the tax policy in this country and would use the VAT to reduce income taxes. Even more, that they would reduce spending. If the Dem's put in a VAT, the GOP could run on reducing income taxes and cut spending (oh, and repealing Obamacare) and win in a landslide.
They may have been Democrats, but they knew damn well that squeezing revenue out of middle- and low-income residents was an absolute necessity.