Bush v McCain

I have long been a supporter of Steve Forbes, this election and last. I support his flat tax plan, social security reform, and so forth. Since he has withdrawn from the race I must support someone else. McCain is one of my senators, here in Arizona. I am a staunch conservative Republican and I have not voted for McCain in the last two senate races because he is not a conservative by any means. I voted instead for the Libertarian candidate for his seat. He's a moderate at best and a liberal at worse, he talks about campaign reform and not being an insider. He's one of the biggest insiders their is, he ran in Arizona last time as an insider who could get things done for us. His idea of campaign reform would take away YOUR right to lobby congress through conservative organizations like the Christian Collation, the NRA, GOA, and so on yet, would do nothing about stopping the liberal media and unions from promoting the liberal agenda.

His financial reform doesn't include tax reform that I've heard and he has said you don't need a tax cut either. Instead he feels it's more important to pay down the debt and "save" social security. Reagan showed if you cut taxes that prosperity goes up and so does government revenue. We have showed that under Clinton as well despite his massive tax increases. Our economy has been up (could of been better if taxes had not of been raised.) and government tax revenues have been up as well. In order to pay off the debt they need to quit spending more and finding new programs to spend on.

He is not well liked here in Arizona, I hang out with fairly conservative people and none would support McCain. In fact the Republican governor of Arizona has endorsed Bush because of his education reform. While McCain is a veteran there are many who have MIA in their families and say McCain had been no help and even has mistreated them.

I admit Bush isn't my ideal candidate but he is the best of the two Republicans who have a chance of winning the presidency. I therefore support Bush for president and ask everyone to rally behind him so we can defeat liberals like McCain and Gore. Thank you.

Rush has reported that the Democrats are rushing out to change their registration to Republican so they can vote for McCain in the primaries trying to influence the out come of the Republican choose of candidate to the McCain who they feel is weaker than Bush and Gore has a change of beating him. It is therefore vital you get out and vote in the primary's for Bush.

If you are thinking of not voting or voting for a third party, don't! We need everyone to turn out and do their best to elect a Republican president, House and Senate. Read why below.
Third Party Candidates

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Flat Tax v National Sales Tax updated 10/20/99

If you look at the two plans out there a Flat Tax wins if you look the details. Right now there is a National Sales Tax plan out there being pushed that the call the "Fair Tax" which is completely misleading. Their major selling point is they will get rid of the IRS. Yea right, I suppose they believe in Santa Claus too. In order to do this they will have to repeal the 16th amendment. A major undertaking which must be ratified by majority of both the House and Senate, President and the state legislatures. If they fail to do so and pass their Sales Tax plan you will end up with both a sales tax and a payroll tax..

While I have no love for the IRS, I must point out that they are only doing the job that Congress has given them. It is the thousands of pages of complex tax law that Congress and Presidents have enacted, and the unconstitutional powers they have given the IRS to enforce those laws that is the problem. If we take away the complex tax law and the unconstitutional powers (IE seizing bank accounts and property without a jury trial) the IRS will not be the treating agency it is. We still will need some agency to collect taxes, whether they are a sales tax, a flat tax, excise taxes, import taxes or what ever other tax they may be charged with collecting and enforcing.

The tax rate they are proposing is 23%. Normally a sales tax is highly regressive. An example of regressive is, say there are two families; one makes $30,000 a year and the other makes $50,000 a year. The 30k family spends 95% of their income and pays taxes on it. Their taxable income is $28,500 and the tax is $6,500 equaling 21.6% of their total income. The 50K family spends 90% of their income and pays taxes on it. Their taxable income is $45,000 and the tax is $10,350 equaling 20.7% of their total income. So the lower income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. This is what regressive means, the greater the difference in income and percentage of what is spent the worse the regressiveness is. If both families spent 100% of their income with no savings they both would pay 23% of their income.

They get around the regressive factor of the tax by giving everyone in the country $1,500 every month to rebate the regressiveness of the tax. To me this is a very hair brained scheme. Disguised welfare plan for everyone. It is my understanding that the 23% tax will be on everything including home purchases. Buying a home is already out of the financial capability of most of the low to middle income people with out adding another 23% tax on top of the inflated prices of homes these days. The reason they want such a high tax is to force people to save money. While I agree that saving money is vitally important and extremely few people in this country are doing so this isn't the way to encourage it. I think this high sales tax will be very damaging to large portions of our economy. Many will not be able to purchase items they do now because of the tax. Can you imagine the cost of an average car with a 23% sales tax on it on top of local taxes? They say the cost of items will go down because they will remove all other taxes on items which get passed on to the consumer now and this will make up for the high rate. While it sounds good when they explain it, I am a skeptic to my core and find it hard to believe that manufactures and retailers will significantly reduce their prices. I do think it is a good idea to remove all other taxes like this and maybe eventually get rid of all taxes except import and excise taxes.

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Flat Tax

Their are a couple of Flat Tax plans around and I'm not sure of all the details of them. I'm writing this while I'm on vacation and don't have my notes or Internet access to do research. Basically they will repeal the current tax code and replace it with a flat 17% for everyone no matter what they make. Then they will give you a deduction from your income for each dependent. I do know that the deduction for a family of 4 making $30,000 a year would offset the tax and they would pay no taxes.

I propose some changes to the Flat Tax plans, we eliminate the payroll deduction for taxes and at the end of every month, everyone must fill out their tax form (very simple with a flat tax) and send in their taxes.

                       Sample Flat Tax form

1 Income                              ______________

2 Number of Dependents X Deduction    ______________
                            
Subtract Line 2 from Line 1, You Owe: ______________

Right now it comes out before we get our checks and most people don't miss it. I want to make it hurt enough that people will pay attention to what the government is doing with their tax money. This is another reason I do not favor a sales tax. How often do you pay attention to how much the sales tax on a purchase unless it is a major item? Very rarely I bet, also I know no one will keep a record of how much you paid every month and year in sales tax. I want people to KNOW how much of their money which they could be deciding what to with it is ending up in the hands of Government.

I also want it built in to the tax law that it takes a 4/5 majority vote to raise the tax rate, but a 3/5 majority vote to reduce the tax rate. This will keep Liberals from hiking the rate every time they think they need more money for some feel good plan of theirs. This means voting for Republicans as lame as they have been the last couple of years. We must remove as many Democrats and other liberals from office so we can make these kind of reforms.