Favoring a Flat Tax Proposal

Paul Weyrich argues for a flat tax. He thinks it would be more fair, and would somehow translate into a tax cut. I doubt it.

He gives us President Reagan as an example of a tax cutter who blessed our economy, and thus private charities. But where's the honesty here?

The cost of government went through the ceiling in the Reagan years. His tax cuts were only cuts in the planned rate of increase under Carter; and this, after all, is something Reagan admitted. So let's give him credit for that.

But worse than this, his administration gave us the largest hidden tax hike in history (to that point) via an astronomical expansion of the national debt. No one, absolutely no one in history had come close to what Reagan did in this regard.

It was Keynesian economics at its worst. Remembering, if you will, that John Maynard Keynes was a Fabian socialist who promised to kill Capitalism by way of euthanasia.

So what do we have then? Is it a bit of an exercise in party over principle?

Edmund Burke noted that party men "may criticize freely upon the Chinese constitution, and observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China."

You see, it is taboo to criticise a man like Reagan for the very economic program we would scream "Socialist!" over if he had been a Democrat.

Reagan did do a few good things, and I liked the man. But to suppose he cut taxes is too indulge in a terrific canard. Mr Weyrich, who really isn't a blind party man, from what I've observed here and there, could have done better than holding up President Ronald Reagan as the beau ideal of fiscal conservatism.

Thomas Jefferson, who sold off federal lands to eliminate the Revolutionary War debt, would have been better.
Favoring a Flat Tax Proposal