Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article about the debate in Indiana’s 9th District between Baron Hill, Eric Schansberg, and Mike Sodrel. I found, however, that I could not concentrate on the substance of the debate because I was distracted by the language used as part of the tax debate.
In particular, the repeated use of the term “fair” tax. Schansberg and Sodrel talked about replacing the progressive income tax with a flat tax or a “fair” tax. The “fair” tax, as described in the article is:
The fair tax is a proposal that would eliminate current income and payroll taxes and replace them with a 23 percent sales tax. Low-income families would receive what’s called a pre-bate, an advance payment meant to compensate them for at least a portion of the sales tax they would pay on goods.
“Fair” just doesn’t strike me as an appropriate adjective to use. It doesn’t really describe what the tax does and it’s a loaded term. “Hey! It’s fair! Who could be against that?” Seems to me that it should be referred to as a sales tax or some variant thereof.
A “fair” comment, Doug. But that’s Washington for you, right? Everything is couched in euphemisms. My favorite is the renaming of a bunch of bills post-9/11– to include the word “security” in the title.
Just another dreamed up waste of everybody’s time scheme by a second rate talk radio guy. Everyone says they want a simple straight tax but they already are carving out exceptions. Incidentally, we may make that 23% sales tax in Indiana, without any other changes.
The much larger issue is the size of government. And if people want the govt to spend that much, then our choices with respect to debt and taxes are constrained by the desire for spending– whether we’re talking about Indy or DC.
Well put, Eric.