The Gamut

DRUDGE REPORT 2004?

A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

"People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.

Hello, we are the Republican Party and we are pathetically desperate.

How far did this idea get Steve Forbes? I want to examine the ideas both Forbes and Bush had back during the last presidential campaign. First Bush:

MS. BROWN: Let me follow up.

As you've indicated, you want to cut the federal income taxes for every American, and you do so on the assumption that there is a budget surplus. So what happens when or if that surplus goes away?

GOV. BUSH: Well, if we elect a Democrat, the surplus will go away, because they'll spend it all.

(Laughs.) I believe that my plan has got reasonable growth numbers. This is a plan that preserves Social Security. It is a plan that meets the basic needs of government, including rebuilding our military.

Now Forbes:

KEYES. How do you abolish the IRS if you don't get rid of the income tax?

FORBES. Well, Alan, whatever tax you have, whether it's the flat tax or national sales tax, you are going to have a collection agency to make sure the money comes in.

......

KEYES. But I think part of the problem is that -- that folk -- folks would still be subject, under your plan, to an income tax when they wanted to give themselves -- when they wanted a tax cut, they'd still have to beg their politicians. When under a sales tax system, they'd give themselves a tax cut by changing their pattern of consumption.

If we really want to give people control of their money, shouldn't we just abolish the income tax?

FORBES. Well, I think if you abolish it for lower-income Americans, yes, that's absolutely true, and that's what I'd do.

And as for the national sales tax, you know, either a flat tax or national sales tax would be much better that what we have today.

But there are challenges for a national sales tax. Depending on what you choose to exempt, the rate can be 20 to 35 percent. So a kid comes and cuts your lawn, you own a 35-percent tax. You send your kid to college, pay tuition, 35 percent tax. That's real -- that's a real burden on people. You buy a new house, 35 percent tax.

And also, too, you better make sure you repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which enables the income tax, you're going to have both an income tax and a sales tax.

So according to Bush the surplus should still be there, but instead they are projecting a record deficit after only three years of his "tax cut." And according to Forbes, even with the flat tax we still need the IRS, but Hastert says he wants to abolish the IRS altogether, and Drudge claims this is to be the centerpiece of the GOP platform.

Somebody tell me why we should believe these guys when they contradict themselves from election cycle to election cycle and adopt one another’s policies which they themselves pooh-poohed four years earlier? And this is not the first time. Bush Sr. pooh-poohed Reaganomics and then sold us his son with the very plan he had dubbed Voo-doo Economics.

I don't even think they believe their own nonsense.

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