I’m 100% in favor of repealing the 16th and 17th amendments and don’t believe we need a BBA. We need to expand the grassroots tea party and ensure we vote in fiscally responsible conservatives. Re-empowering the right of state legislators to elect their own senators per the constitution to represent the interests of their own state governments (or face recall) would go far in defanging and defunding the federal beast.
And I agree, a 10% flat tax on all income (or an appropriately sized flat excise tax on all purchases if that should prove better) should raise enough revenue to support a constitutionally authorized and limited government.
At least with the flat tax,..you will capture some sales revenue from the 14 million illegals.
It is imperative that for our Republic to survive the 17th Amendment must be repealed. That alone would greatly shift power back to the States.
I am not in favor of the BBA either. All Congress would do is redefine the GDP or some other gimmick that would allow them to continue spending as they are now.
Gentlemen,
Please be careful not to confuse the FairTax (deliberate no space between r and T in FairTax) with the Flat Tax, as each is legislation in Congress and they are entirely different tax regimes.
Mr. Robinson is still correct in his point that the 16th repealed leads to an opportunity to revert to an excise tax and that such a tax to be Constitutional must necessarily be flat or uniformly applied.
The FairTax is brilliantly designed and uniformly applied to be a flat tax on consumer spending that taxes qualified Americans only after they have spent beyond ‘the bare essentials of living’, a euphemism for the poverty line. All other nonresidents on American soil are taxed uniformly on all purchases.
In other words under the FairTax there is for EVERY American not one penny of federal taxation applied below the poverty line.
And the above sentence corrects and repairs the longstanding ‘disproportionate burden’ argument of American tax history that has been used by those educated in communist and socialist philosophy to justify the graduated income tax and hence the foundational necessity for the 16th Amendment.
As we see a rapidly approaching historical opportunity to retool the apparatus used by our federal government in its power to spend and by association its power to tax, I point out to you that many will make their move, a move to implement a tax reform. I beg you to not be deceived or deluded to think of the ‘Flat Tax’ as a solution any more than you should allow youself to be persuaded that a FairTax can coexist with the 16th Amendment.
The Flat Tax is an income tax and by necessity requires the 16th Amendment to withstand challenges to its Constitutionality. We have had it in our history at times between our Civil War in 1861 until the establishment of the 16th Amendment in 1913. Every time our nation enacted a flat tax on income it began a process of bifurcation into a multi-tiered tax structure leading to a graduated income tax.
In other words the Flat Tax under the 16th Amendment never stays ‘flat’ because the 16th Amendment grants a de facto license to Congress to change the meaning and tax applicability of the word ‘income’.
This morphing of a Flat Tax into a tax code of monstrous complexity within a decade or two after its passage is due to power granted to Congress by the 16th Amendment.
I also beg you not to be persuaded to allow a consumption tax such as the FairTax to coexist with the 16th Amendment for then it will become a Value Added Tax or VAT.
A sharp student of American tax history would ask the question of why if the FairTax is so brilliant and solves a vexing problem of the original Constitutional tax provisions, why was it not applied before 1913, the year when the 16th Amendment was established?
And the answer is simple: “Inadequate Technology”.
But today we have the technology and we should use it to implement a means of taxation that will restore many of our lost freedoms and will cause the repatriation of more than 20 trillion US dollars of offshore holdings, as well as revive American competitiveness in global markets for products and services, and importantly comform with the Founder’s Original Intent.
So I beg you to support the FairTax over the Flat Tax when those in the know will make their move for tax reform after the current crisis erupts into a Constitutional facedown.
Please take the time to study this easy-worded FAQ:
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
I am all for smaller government, cutting spending, but my main concern is all this politicking being done which is putting a large stress on what assets I, as an individual, have.
You talk about fiscal conservatism, and I can guarantee you the average person here on THIS site is probably living in debt. I have more cash and cash assets than people who live a lifestyle fit for multimillionaires but in reality have debt up to their necks.
I can’t say what will happen to the economy should we default, but Im fairly certain it wont bode well for either the market of the dollar. In that case, I stand to lose alot, infact more than I would ever need to pay in repealing the tax cuts that we so wanted to keep and fought for. We want to solve this problem in only one way possible, basically have the cake and eat it too.
Personally, Ive already transfered most of my cash assets to a mixture of the pound, euro, yen and swiss franc. I am not interested in playing with this risky scenario and I won’t lie and say I know what would happen in case of default. Both sides are unwilling to budge, and saying “hold the line” is like playing a game of chicken, one which I personally dont wish to partake in. My family’s security means more than anything, and I dont take kindly when people (from both sides) are messing with that.