Walberg apparently is a tax and spend liberal. This is from todays CIT PAT.

Way to go Wally! Another great conservative value.

A 23% Tax! Un-F------ believable!


Walberg makes good on campaign promise

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, has made good on his campaign promise to co-sponsor a bill that would raise the national sales tax to 23 percent in 2009.

The bill introduced Jan. 4 by Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., also would eliminate income, payroll and estate and gift taxes.

"The legislation basically gets the IRS out of the way," said Joe Wicks, Walberg's chief of staff. "It simplifies the tax code and overall reduces the burden on taxpayers."
 

How does fiscal conservative Walberg propose to pay for the interest rate reduction? If he bails out on his priciples, his Club for Growth backers will bail out on him.
 

Walberg has no clue on economic issues, he proved that in Lansing. If the IRS "gets out of the way" what agency will collect the sales tax? Only a liberal would propose this, it would create a huge bureaucracy, more government and higher prices for everything.

Who was discussing a recall here? I think it's time if he proposes this BS.
 

Fitzy, I am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you.
 

How fast would democrats raise the tax rate if they only had to change one tax? No farting around with tax credits, no hitting the rich, but just one simple rate of tax to adjust. How fast? Would it have made it into the first 100 hours agenda of Pelosi?

A single, national sales tax it a horrible idea and the funniest thing is how a handful of super wealthy individuals have convinced so many people it would be a deal for them.
 

To the blog author, I commend you immensely on giving kudos to Walhberg when you agree with him. It adds credibility to your blog, even though I disagree with most of your stuff.

To anonymous, you grossly distort what the "FairTax" advocates propose. It gets the "IRS out" of the business of collecting taxes from individuals, and puts them in the much smaller, cheaper, and less intrusive business of collecting sales taxes from businesses (you'd think it was obvious that this is a much smaller pool of collection!). That, indeed, is where they claim their major savings. In exchange for the increasing the 23% sales tax, they eliminate more tax burden overall.

Income taxes make labor and production less competitive and do nothing to goods produced OUTSIDE the U.S. A sales tax effectively acts as a tariff on foreign trade (hence, the one thing Europe has a competitive edge on us in with their VATs). You'd think the left here would consider that possibility. And as far as the poor go, the so-called "pre-bate" operates exactly like the Earned Income Credit, and could be even ramped up to be stronger (like Milton Friedman's Negative Income Tax - call it a negative sales tax (NST)). So progressivity is not only possible - but much easier.

Now yes, I'm concerned about the idea of ease of tax movement (increasing income tax isn't any harder) if everything was one and the idea that Congress might incrementally re-start the income tax - hence, I'd only support a FairTax if accompanied by Constitutional changes against income tax and increasing the tax without supermajorities. I'd also have to seriously consider the "transition cost" ramifications in simple uncertainty effects on the economy. I'm not sure I support FT for this reason - but it's interesting academically - and unfair to dismiss with the gross rhetoric here.