Last week during the Republican presidential debate televised by CNN there was a thunderous reaction from the crowd upon Governor Mike Huckabee’s mention of the FairTax. CNN, in fact, said that Huckabee’s mention of the FairTax during that debate brought the strongest positive audience reaction they’ve seen to this point.
Many reasons have been cited for Mike Huckabee’s surprisingly strong showing in the polling ahead of the Iowa Caucus, among those reason’s being Huckabee’s endorsement of the FairTax. This comes as no huge surprise to either Congressman John Linder or me. When we saw The FairTax Book debut No. 1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list in 2005 we knew the FairTax was a tax reform plan that the people were going to love.
The people … but not necessarily the politicians.
There is simply not the space here to fully describe the FairTax here. Let’s just say that it replaces all corporate and personal federal income and payroll taxes, along with capital gains taxes and the death tax, with one federal embedded sales tax at the retail level. You don’t pay any more for your toilet paper and milk than you do now, you get your entire paycheck, and April 15th becomes just another Spring day. You can buy The FairTax Book if you want to know more, or visit www.fairtax.org.
Once again, though, I find myself offering a column in response to still more absurd – irresponsibly so – attacks on the FairTax. This time the attacks come from Washington Times political reporter Donald Lambro and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Both of these men are too smart to have written what has been attributed to them, so we must suspect the work of ill-informed research assistants or staffers. Actually, I’m just trying to be nice. They may really believe what they’ve been saying.
Let’s deal with Donald Lambro first and just let Rudy twist in the wind for a few moments longer.
Lambro’s misrepresentation of the FairTax is particularly distressing in light of the fact that I think that he’s a very gifted writer. I’ve used his columns for program fodder many times. We’re all entitled to a bad day though, and this time Lambro blew it. Lambro’s column, which appeared yesterday here at Townhall.com, was titled “Not Everyone Loves Huckabee.” That column contained this gem of a reference to the FairTax:
“Huckabee says he would like to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and replace the income tax with the so-called Fair Tax, which would impose a national sales tax on virtually everything we buy. But such a tax would be a disaster for this country, especially for low- and middle-income Americans who spend a disproportionate portion of their earnings -- in many cases all of it -- on the necessities of life.”
What? Can it be even remotely possible that Donald Lambro has taken any time at all to study the FairTax? If so, it sure doesn’t show in his writings. Permit me, please, to set you straight.
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