Posted by
IndyBlogger on Thursday, November 06, 2008 3:58:10 PM
This post follows up on my States rights post. I think
States should have more power to control local issues and be different from
other states. Federal spending leads to more waste - not efficiency, and it
leads to less accountability. Further, we live in a Republic, where we are
represented federally by elected individuals. We have a certain number of
representatives based on our relative population distribution. So California gets
dramatically more influence on federal issues, because they are big. The voting
system, House and Senate was setup to balance this out. I'm going to suggest
that federal tax paying should follow this same model. Last, Presidents get on
the stump and promise to change the tax code to 'buy' votes. These promises are
usually not kept and have lead to the disaster of a tax code we have now.
We should do away with Federal Income tax, permanently and modify the
constitution to make sure it never comes back. When a person completes their
annual tax returns they complete a state tax return and federal tax return.
Then we need twice as many people because we are checking them twice,
processing them twice, prosecuting them twice, etc. A total waste that only the
government could think was a good idea.
So what should we do?
At the end of the year, we split the bill according to electoral votes. So if a
budget is passed for $1 Trillion, and you are CA with 55 votes and there are
538 total in the pool, than CA gets their portion of the bill ~10%. That state
then collects enough money from its people to pay that bill with whatever
mechanism they see fit for their economy. Now we are talking fair and simple.
The impact is a dramatic reduction in federal spending. It also means less
power for the federal government to control our lives. The power is what the
federal politicians really want at this time. This plan pushes accountability
closer to the people and holds representatives responsible for their votes near
the time when the money was spent. That doesn't happen today because no one
actually gets a bill. Federally we get debt, and some other generation could
get a bill (Eventually will). This will help control spending once the current
representative is liable to pay their fair share and not pass off the problem
to the next guy.
Last I propose a marginal, lets call it 2-3% federal sales tax. This sales tax
will expressly be used to pay down the federal debt and expire when such debt
reaches 0. A federal sales tax is better than an income tax for several
reasons. The first being that it is fair. If you spend money, you pay the tax.
If you want to save money, you don't pay the tax. It doesn't matter how you
earned the money, if you spend it, you pay. You don't need complicated
deductions and different rates for the different ways you earned the money. Who
cares, how you got the money, if you spend it, you pay. The next positive is
that everyone pays it, which includes illegal immigrants, people working under
the table, teenagers, rich people with big deductions, foreign visitors, etc. I
understand this will require some federal over site, so before you fire all the
people currently supporting the federal income tax, lets keep a few people to
do this. The result is still smaller federal government when you net it out.
Business are already used to collecting and filing sales tax and the number of
entities to track and audit is considerably smaller.
This plan puts accountability on the people who vote for the budgets when they
spend the money, which they get out of now. This accountability is crucial to
ensure better spending of our money. This plan will reduce overall government
spending and waste. It reduces the power of the federal government. Its a fair
plan where CA, can't pass their bills off on NH. Where drug dealers contribute
to reducing the national debt. This plan will return this country to fiscal
responsibility by making budgets and spending a key element of every election.
These are all things your representatives desperately don't want, but as
Americans we desperately need.