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| Home Front: Politix |
| Liberals to run wild as Greeks in the streets? |
| 2010-05-06 |
| Recently, the president and his allies have been talking up a VAT without quite endorsing it. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged adoption of a VAT.) It has the political advantage of being an indirect tax, imposing a levy at every level of production. It's a hidden sales tax with the potential of raising an enormous amount of revenue. The president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which began its work last week, is required to submit a plan for serious deficit reduction by Dec. 1, four weeks after the November election. Its recommendations are non-binding, but a lame duck Congress would be in position to take them up, including a possible VAT. Should Democrats suffer a landslide defeat, their large majorities would still be in place for the lame-duck session. What would Democrats who'd been defeated for re-election have to lose by voting for a VAT? Not much. This scenario isn't as far-fetched as you might think. In a speech at a Democratic reception in Boston on April 1, Mr. Obama boasted of his willingness to do the unpopular: "If you govern by pundit and polls, then you lose sight of why you got into public service in the first place," he said. His "job," he said, isn't to "husband my popularity [and] make sure that I'm not making waves. . . . So I resolved to do not necessarily what was popular, but what I thought was right." Does Mr. Obama think a VAT would be "right"? Take a guess. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |