The headline is self-contradictory. If it’s flat, there’s no way it can be stuctured as a VAT. Of course, if you want to redefine terms to support your assertion, go ahead. Then who’s the fraud and scammer?
Now you are just being an opaque sophist. I hope you are not actually aware of the dimensions of the scam Cruz is perpetrating here.
At the end of the day taxes have to be paid by the lower 1/3 of income earners, or the middle 7/12 ths or the upper 1/12th (just so it all adds up to 100%). That the lower 1/3 largely got written out of the income tax code is a democratic scam, but at the end of the day all of the money has to come from the upper 2/3rds. What Cruz is pushing is 10% on the upper 1/12th. The rest of us get stuck with the tax bill for the things that their lobbyists push the congress to spend money on.
In short Heidi's paymasters have invented scheme to lower their taxes even further and simplify the tax code for them while sticking it to the 7/12ths who have the income to pay their tax bills for them.
It's a fraud, and this one is all of Cruz's creation (and the folks behind him).