Posted on 03/24/2015 2:10:16 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Weeks before other Republicans are expected to announce their presidential candidacies, Ted Cruz has already injected a very nasty little virus into the right-wing primary process: the ridiculous idea that the IRS should be abolished.
While some have been quick to conclude this idea indicates Cruz is truly stupid, I don’t think he is. You just have to understand that the real intent of the abolish-the-IRS campaign pledge cannot be publicly stated.
As The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell notes, the IRS is a cash-flow-positive agency, generating around $255 in income for every $1 assigned to it in federal funding. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities adds that although every $1 spent on the IRS enforcement division generates about $6 in recovered cash, Republican-backed budget cuts have reduced the agency’s enforcement staff from 50,400 in 2010 to 42,800 in 2014.
Putting aside the fact that Cruz has repeatedly gotten basic facts about the IRS wrong (such as claiming there are 110,000 IRS “agents,” when there’s really somewhere around 20,500), the Texas senator claims that entire IRS can be replaced by a flat tax that can be filled out on a “postcard.” But he has yet to discuss what kind of agency would replace the IRS to actually review, process, and enforce compliance with the new system. That’s intentional. He doesn’t want one; he’s fundamentally opposed to the entire notion of progressive taxation itself
No IRS means no enforcement capability and thus massive tax fraud. No IRS means a dramatic collapse in federal revenue. No IRS even dooms his own proposed tax reform, since no one will be around to actually implement it. These are all also intentional.
These are features, not flaws. If rich right-wingers are better able to successfully break more tax laws with even less scrutiny, then they’re just job creators struggling under the yoke of socialist oppression. If federal tax revenues collapse, then that’ll just give Congress an excuse to finally cut off all those parasitic welfare programs and privatize more services. If no IRS means the federal government can’t actually set up or implement his radically retrogressive tax plan, then whatever. It’s just intended as presenteeism anyways.
Cruz is aggressively advancing the Republican agenda set by Grover Norquist back in 2001: to reduce the federal government to “the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Never mind that this agenda is, well, manifestly evil, designed to entrench a ruling plutocratic elite and further reduce the power of the powerless.
In an age where most people agree that the rich should pay their fair share in taxes, cloaking this agenda with faux-populist attacks on a historically disliked federal agency that is frankly an easy target makes perfect sense.
By entering the primaries so early and doing so in an incredibly reactionary way, Cruz has already succeeded in pushing the GOP presidential contest much further to the right. Some kind of dramatic change to the IRS that goes further than already-disastrous budget cuts is now firmly on the GOP table. Cruz may have little chance of winning, but the past decade has seen many far-right ideas infiltrate the mainstream. Abolishing the IRS is exactly the kind of right-wing soundbite that could become very dangerous if Republicans somehow simultaneously sleaze their way into a congressional supermajority and the White House.
It’s easy to dismiss Cruz as a know-nothing idiot. But he’s stupid like a fox, and the henhouse is America’s progressive tax system. We should be a little more worried.
A cash-flow positive agency? Sure, when people are forced to contribute to that cash flow. That is like saying that Labour Camps are “Human Resource Positive” entities.
The IRS is cash flow positive, and North Korea has 100% voter turnout.
It isn’t rocket science. They know what the state GDP is approximately and how much tax it should generate. If most of it gets paid, then compliance is good.
>>generating around $255 in income for every $1 assigned to it
Any shakedown operation with armed thugs can make that claim. I bet that a mafia protection racket does better than $225 for every $1 spent.
I’ve never really considered myself as a single issue voter, but I gotta tell ya, abolishing the IRS would be the single best thing that has happened to America in several decades.
I can’t tell ya how many times I came up out of the train station in D.C. to butt headlong into the IRS building....some strange reason, each and every time I felt like takin a pi$$
RE: Ted Cruz’s Plan To Abolish the IRS Isn’t Stupid, It’s Plain Evil
These people seem to be saying by implication that America was an evil country prior to Woodrow Wilson because we did not have the IRS then.
When a piece of excrement can write an article that says “Republican-backed budget cuts have reduced the agency’s enforcement staff from 50,400 in 2010 to 42,800 in 2014.” while saying “[he’s] gotten basic facts about the IRS wrong (such as claiming there are 110,000 IRS “agents,” when there’s really somewhere around 20,500), then I know that mathematics nor command of facts is not something the writer really cares about.
Ted Cruz has already injected a very nasty little virus into the right-wing primary process: the ridiculous idea that the IRS should be abolished.
Actually THAT comment by the author is “EVIL”..
Abolishing the IRS is first step in abolishing the federal reserve.. Energy Dept., Human Services and Welfare, Education Dept, entire Agriculture Dept(s)., National Park Service.. Homeland Security, and AT LEAST 200 other Agencys and Bureaucracies.. maybe 500..
The one thing about a flat tax that EVERYONE! pays is that it eliminates the welfare cliff. It would smooth out the transition from welfare to work without that huge drop in income when your wages go over a certain number and the welfare cuts out. With a flat tax that is also paid on welfare benefits that cliff levels out and I would hope that would encourage people to get off welfare. My economist wife tells me that is what would happen. I’m sure many on this forum know much more about this than I do but it sounds great.
And if it doesn't then how do they know who to go afer?
Bank robbers are cash flow positive. So are burglars, pick pockets and car thieves. This author of this drivel is a moron, a moonbat, a liberal...ah, I repeat myself.
Me thinks there would be considerably less fraud with a postcard sized tax form. To reduce fraud, tax everyone equally, with few, if any, deductions. A low tax rate from everyone would generate enough income for the feds, combined with a balanced budget and a significantly reduced federal footprint.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the economist wife of mine works for the IRS. She’d be happy to have her job abolished.
Abolish the IRS is a terrific start. I can think of many more three letter bureaucracies to be rid of as well like the EPA and the NEA, and at least one two letter pseudo-government organization - the UN.
When they’re Nixon’s tool they’re “the Gestapo”.
Lo and behold when they’re THEIR tool their budget is sacrosanct and if cut the sky will fall:
Noted.
A capitation tax takes less over site, would have close to zero fraud and would be the most equitable taxation possible.
The IRS is the Right Arm of The Democratic Party , CUT IT OFF
Can’t argue that point.
Take away the IRS and you’ve just stripped the federal government of a huge portion of it’s punative power over the citizens.
A beautiful thang!
Taking money out of the private sector to feed the federal leviathan is NEVER a good thing.
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