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.
Nothing is going to be perfect, but something has to be said for honest people wanting to support the system. Taxation has devolved into a silly game.
What Cruz really means is to make the taxation system so simple that you do not need a swelled body of bureaucrats to oversee the details. And especially not something like Obamacare.
As long as there were taxes, there would always be something having the function of the IRS, even if it was subsumed into the Treasury Department.
The government abused it, the government should lose it.
That is all there is to it, and it should lose every over agency that it has abused America with.
Gee wiz, I must-ah misunderstood.
Abolish the IRS...nope, I heard it right.
Obviously Tom McCay is racist and anti-Latino.
The movement began in the early 20th century with Caesar subsuming the role of private charity with “Social Security.”
The cute little puppy has morphed into a huge wolf.
Tom McKay needs to be audited and I’ll bet he’ll change his tune.
This topic does rather nicely show the dismay of the ruling class that anyone might dare to defund "their" government. What's the point in clawing one's way to the top of the heap if the little people underneath think they can stop paying up?
Rhetoric can’t always be taken with wooden literality. There will still always be a taxation entity no matter what it is called.. if you wanna, call it Cruz Tax Service, but it still does the same thing.
The tax code has to change, no if’s and’s or but’s about it, if American taxation paradigms are also to change.
True. That's what happens when you're a government agency tasked with taking money away from American citizens by means of implied and/or actual force.
TO HELL WITH THE IRS!
I hope the left run on the idea that the IRS is a great thing.
They actually believe the IRS “generates money”. The IRS STEALS MONEY BY COERSION.
Yep... force them into that corner... about time conservatives came out swinging for common sense.
Liberals categorize conservatives as either stupid or evil. Ike, Reagan, Bush were stupid idiots. Nixon was an evil genius. The Libs are desperately trying to figure out Cruz now. They’d like to laugh at him as stupid but my gut tells me they will settle on evil.
They noted, no problem, they will focus their business on helping businesses on investing profits and or growing their businesses.
Man this author was apoplectic, they know the power and control and goodies are dealt out via the code, and can't stand the thought of loosing control of us, the little people.
The revenge of Steve Forbes should be served cold and will be delicious.....
Barky and Hillary and all they associate with are pure evil.
Or as my husband points out, think of the brain power wasted by the smartest people in the US, trying to figure out how to pay less taxes, which could be used for doing something more productive.
Tom McKay: RACIST.
He doesn’t like Sen. Cruz because he’s Latino. The racism exudes from the article.
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