Regarding Cruz’s flat tax, I have a couple of questions. First, what happened to Cruz’s constitutionally indefensible promise to abolish the IRS? Does he intend for his flat tax to take the place of the IRS?
Note that a president cannot abolish the IRS without the consent of Congress. And I think that Congress likes the IRS. After all, corrupt lawmakers can keep their voting records clean by allowing the IRS to make unpopular tax regulations for them.
Next, what was Cruz indoctrinated with in Harvard Law School? His flat tax proposal indicates that it certainly wasn’t the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood.
From a related thread …
More specifically, a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, basically any issue which Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Also note that the example taxes given in the OP deal with INTRAstate commerce. But despite what FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices wanted everybody to believe about Congresss’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3), a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had also clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution the specific power to regulate intrastate commerce.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
I don’t think that Cruz understands that one of the very few domestic federal spending programs that the states have actually delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for is the U.S. Mail Service (1.8.7). Most other federal domestic spending programs are based on 10th Amendment-protected state powers and state revenues which the feds have stolen from the states by means of unconstitutional House appropriations bills.
In fact, based on the Court’s statements above, here is a rough approximation of how much taxpayers should be paying Congress annually to perform its Section 8-limited power duties.
Given that the plurality of clauses in Section 8 deal with defense, and given that the Department of Defense budget for 2015 was $500+ billion, I will generously round up the $500+ billion figure to $1 trillion (but probably much less) as the annual price tag of the federal government to the taxpayers.
In other words, the corrupt media, including Obama guard dog Fx News, should not be reporting multi-trillion dollar annual federal budgets without mentioning the Supreme Court’s clarification of Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes in budget discussions.
Remember in November!
When patriots elect Trump, or whatever conservative they elect, they need to also elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its Section 8-limited powers to support the new president, but also put a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes.
Also consider that such a Congress would probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
Well, you’re certainly getting to the heart of the BIG issue in our country about which so many here and elsewhere seem to be oblivious: the $4 trillion mostly unconstitutional federal government.
You and I are close to what the actual constitutional size of the feds would be - I estimate roughly about $800 billion.
Either way, what we propose and what somebody actually tries or miraculously succeeds in implementing would send hundreds of thousands of federal government officials, bureaucratic heads, and workers home packing. Short term loss for them, long term recovery for America.
You rightly bring up the Commerce Clause as a source perverted by the Left to grant sweeping government powers not intended by the ratifiers of the Constitution.
Two other perversions the Left has used to give essentially despotic powers to the feds are the so-called “Incorporation Doctrine”, a perversion of the intent of the 14th Amendment, and the Administrative State which violates both the constitutional limitations on the feds power and the separation of powers.
You also rightly acknowledge state sovereignty which contrary to what the Left claims and apparently many so-called conservatives think is still constitutionally and legally intact although sadly not asserted.
State sovereignty should be asserted to nullify unconstitutional federal acts which by definition are acts of tyranny. Sooner or later, it is the people of each state who will decide whether they want to stay dependent and slaves to an illegal government or whether they will fight for their freedom and against tyranny through their states.