Read My Lips?

I have already excoriated the President once this week, but he deserves another kick in the butt for this one:

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

For once, I completely agree with something that the Obama administration is trying to do. I have been a kill-the-progressive-income-tax believer since the mid 90s; as I started doing real work and paying real taxes, it quickly became apparent how ridiculous and needlessly complicated the system was. So I would love to see something like this, because it really WOULD be fair for everyone. I prefer a flat income tax to a sales tax, because a flat income tax has fewer penalties for those who are devout and dedicated to putting money into savings (as Martha Stewart says, "a good thing"), but I'll take a sales tax over the current nonsense. This assumes, of course, that we completely dump the income tax for this national sales tax.

But that's not why Obama deserves another trip to the woodshed.

Remember how he had promised SO MANY TIMES not to raise taxes on lower- and middle-class families? Guess what this does?? Also notice how there's no explicit mention of reducing or removing income taxes, which prior proponents of the "Fair Tax" had proposed. This would essentially be a supplemental tax that would raise consumer prices across the board, for everyone. Even if you remove the income tax for the bottom 90% of families, as the article proposes, the folks at the bottom are still paying more than they did before! Even though the current system stinks, in it a family of 4 earning $35,000 a year (so pretty much lower-class) pays almost no tax on every paycheck with the right deductions on their W-4. What they do pay, they get back at the end of the year. With a national sales tax, they pay any time they buy something, just like everyone else, making it more fair and equal in the traditional senses of those words (not the newfangled liberal senses). How is that not raising their taxes?? For those people to get any of that back, they would have to keep all their receipts and somehow be able to submit them for some sort of income-based refund process through their income tax stuff, making the entire process more difficult and more painful for them. How is that helpful?

Well done, Mr. Obama...way to keep your word.