Since I’m having trouble with links today, here is Boortz’s article:
MICHELLE NUNN AND THE FAIRTAX
By Neal Boortz
There are many verbal or written cues that can identify someone as a person with little knowledge of the subject at hand, but a great penchant for demagoguery. Perhaps one of the greatest of such cues would be the use of the “R” word. Yup … you got it … calling someone a racist. People who use that word seldom (if ever) know what the word actually means. They say it because they’ve heard other people say it, and it seems to be an effective and proven way to bring any conversation to a screaming halt.
There is one particular conversation that Democrats simply don’t want to have, and that is conversation about the FairTax. When the subject is broached, as it was by Republican David Perdue in his campaign for the open Georgia Senate seat, Democrats have to find a way to shut it down. The more people learn about the FairTax – the TRUTH about the FairTax – the more likely they are to support it; and that goes double, maybe even triple, for those on the lower end of the economic scale.
Well … that brings us to Michelle (Nunn) Martin. (Her real last name is Martin, you know). She heard David Perdue express support for the FairTax. She lives in Georgia, and she knows that for some unexplainable reasopm support for the FairTax in Georgia is high. She had to come up with an argument that would convince the voters her campaign is targeting, big government liberals and people voting for a living, that the FairTax is a bad idea.
So … Michelle Nunn strikes during a GPTV debate on October 17th. From the statement she made during that debate it is absolutely clear that she did not one ounce of research on the FairTax on her own. She relied on the Democrat Party and her 0bama Administration handlers for her FairTax talking points and, as so many before her have done, proceeded to exhibit her ignorance on the subject to everyone with an actual clue.
First … though you probably don’t need to be told … let me ‘splain to you why Democrats hate the FairTax so intensely. Now I’m sorry I don’t have the time to completely explain the FairTax to you; for that you can go to www.FairTax.org, or you can actually read the two books I wrote: “FairTax” and “FairTax, the Truth.” When you understand the FairTax you will understand that Democrats despise and fear this tax reform plan because they KNOW that it would be the largest transfer of power from government to the people since our Constitution was ratified. Democrats live, eat and breathe government power. They obtain this power by making huge segments of the American population dependent on government. The FairTax would take literally millions of Americans dependent on government and make them self-reliant citizens with private sector jobs and strong economic growth.
Did I just say “private sector jobs?” Why yes, I did. And I used that phrase less than a week after Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate in 2016, warned us not to let anyone tells us that corporations and small businesses create jobs. Well just imagine what businesses could do in this country if there were no corporate income taxes, and if there was no tax component added to labor or capital! America would become the biggest job creating economy in history … and Democrats would lose millions of voters who once voted for their living but who now earn that living in the private sector.
So just what did Michelle Nunn say about the FairTax?
Well .. the first thing out of her mouth is the 30% nonsense. She said “The FairTax would mean a 30%= tax on things like groceries, milk, everything.”
The FairTax is an inclusive tax … just like the income tax it is designed to replace. It’s this simple. If you earn $10,000 and you’re in the 28% tax bracket, you will pay 28% of $10,000, or $2,800. Under the FairTax if an item costs $100 and the FairTax rate is 23%, $23 of that $100 would be the tax, not $30.00. So where does Michelle Nunn come up with the 30% distortion? Well, as I said, she didn’t come up with it at all. She did NO research. She got that number from her Democrat Party – the party that is desperately fighting this tax reform plan that would free millions of voters from government dependency. Here’s how the Democrats came up with that number: You buy something for $100. Of that sum $23 goes to the government, and $77 goes to the merchant and the producer of that item. You divide the $23 in tax by the $77 that goes to the merchant and you get 0.2987 or 30%. Now if you went back to our example earning $10,000 and paying $2,800 in income taxes because he’s in the 28% tax bracket and figured the tax rate the exact same way, by dividing the $2,800 paid to the government by the $7,200 kept by the taxpayer you would come up with an income tax rate of 38.9%, not 28%. Democrats like Michelle Nunn like to keep with the false 30% claim for the FairTax, but refuse to apply the same formula to their precious income tax because the income tax is their baby, the FairTax is a grave threat.
There’s another key to understanding that Michelle Nunn knows NOTHING about the FairTax and is merely relying on talking points from Obama and the Democrat National Campaign Committee. Nunn is being widely quoted as saying that 50% of Georgians would end up paying more in taxes under the FairTax, and that the rich would pay less.
Blatantly untrue.
What did Michelle Nunn miss?
The prebate.
The truth is nobody – not one individual – not one American household – would pay one single penny to the federal government in taxes until they had met the basic and essential needs of their family. How does that work? The federal government develops a figure every year of just how much a family of a certain size has to pay to cover the family’s basic necessities … food, clothing, shelter, transportation and the like. Right now that figure for a family of four is $31,020. So if you go out and spend $31,020 to support a family of four, just how much of that total is going to end up in the hands of the federal government? At a FairTax rate of 23% that figure would be $7,135. Now divide that figure by twelve. You’ll come up with $595 per month that family would be paying in FairTax. So, under the FairTax plan, that family would receive a monthly prebate of $595. It’s called a prebate because it’s paid at the beginning of the month, not at the end after the consumer has spent the money. The prebate would come in the form of a credit to a bank checking account, a debit card, a credit card … you get the idea.
So why did Michelle Nunn completely ignore the prebate? Easy. Because she had no clue it existed, that’s why. You could jam what Michelle Nunn knows about the FairTax up an ant’s hiney and it would rattle around like a BB in a boxcar. She didn’t know about the FairTax prebate because she did absolutely NO research on her own … NONE … and simply relied on talking points supplied to her by the Democrat Party.
Now I have to assume that there are people reading this who are learning something about the FairTax for the first time. First let me say that over $22 million dollars went into research and development of this tax reform plan. It’s not just a wild harebrained idea. It is easily the most researched piece of legislation that has appeared before the Congress of the United States in our lifetimes. For instance, do you think for a minute that anywhere close to that amount of money was spent developing and designing Obamacare?
One more point .. that 23% FairTax rate. If you’re not familiar with the plan that figure may horrify you. In fact, Michelle Nunn said that the 23% figure would mean that 50% of Georgians would end up paying $4000 more in taxes. Now I’m not going to call that a lie. You have to know something to be untrue when you say it for the statement to be a lie. Michelle Nunn didn’t know that statement was false because, again, she did no research and asked no questions on her own. She just parroted Democrat talking points. So here’s what she didn’t tell you, and what she probably doesn’t even know.
The FairTax gets rid of personal and corporate income taxes, estate taxes and payroll (Social Security and Medicare) taxes. Put together these taxes represent an average of about 22% of the cost of all goods and services sold in the United States. Again .. those taxes disappear. They are replaced by the FairTax. The competitive pressures of the marketplace will prevent any merchant or producer from trying to reap a windfall by adding the FairTax to the price of their product without a compensating reduction in product costs to reflect the disappearance of income and payroll taxes. We have seen instances where businesses have tried to keep prices at current levels when tax components are eliminated, and it has never worked. The prices come down. So … under the FairTax consumer prices for goods and services will remain virtually unchanged.
Now there’s not much time left before the vote next Tuesday. I’m out of town. In fact -— rather far away in Hawaii. As I type these notes I can hear the surf crashing on the waves below. But I do have a working telephone – and I make this challenge to Michelle Nunn. You chose the venue. You chose the radio talk show – the news program – the press conference – and you allow me to patch in by telephone so that you and I can debate the FairTax. Think you can handle that Michelle? Think you could survive in that debate without your Democrat/Obama talking points?
Let’s give it a try. You people know how to reach me.