October 17, 2011

Who Knew Conservatives Loved the IRS?

By C. Edmund Wright
If there's one thing that the ongoing national debate over Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan has exposed, it's how much some conservatives love our current tax code and its enforcement arm.  Who knew? Okay, that may be an exaggeration -- but it is not an overstatement to say that much of the criticism of Cain's plan coming from the right is based in a stunning comfort with and knee-jerk reliance on our current system.  It's as if there is an undercurrent of belief that our IRS system is very, very good and can be replaced only by perfection.  At the very least, much of the negative analysis is based on picking one aspect of the Cain plan and applying it to our current reality as if the 9-9-9 plan was ever designed to be applied piecemeal.  This notion can come from only an intellectual vacuum where tax realities do not change human behavior.  Whether the 9-9-9 plan is all that Cain (and Art Laffer, Paul Ryan, Steve Forbes, and The Club for Growth) say it is not the...(Read Full Article)