A Balanced Budget Amendment... and Tax Reform to Match

[unixronin]

Find this petition on PatriotPetitions:

To President George Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist:

We, the people of these United States, rightfully petition our President, House of Representatives and Senate to proffer a Balanced Budged Amendment to the Constitution, coupled with the enactment of the tax system overhaul Republicans promised.

The only real hope for preventing the weight of the central government from crushing the life from our Republic is to renew the bid for a constitutionally mandated balanced-budget amendment and to enact real tax reform as originally outlined by Ronald Reagan.  That amendment and reform will force Congress to either make dramatic cuts in government spending or enact enormous tax increases to pay for the current distended and mostly unconstitutional government budget.

A Balanced Budget Amendment, combined with real tax reform; namely, a flat or national sales tax with deductions and exclusions, will result in a reduction in government spending, as American taxpayers will not tolerate bearing the burden of the actual cost of government.

We call on Republicans -- our President and Congress -- to make such legislation the new priority in Washington, ushering in a new era of restraint, responsibility and respect for the constitutional limitations of government.  We expect President Bush to embrace Ronald Reagan's legacy, and make limited government and fair taxation his administration's principal objectives for the remainder of his second term.

Go sign it.  They're looking for 100,000 signatures.  It's unlikely the hogs wallowing at the public trough in Washington will pay attention ... but hey, they certainly won't if people don't sign it.  Give it a shot.  You never know, it might get results.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's not a simple problem, and doesn't have simple solutions that aren't flawed. But the current system is so horribly broken it's hard to imagine a replacement that would stand any actual chance of passing that wouldn't be a big improvment. The current income tax system has a vast, bloated tax code that apparently not even the IRS themselves fully understands any more, combined with a patchwork maze of state regulations so tangled and inconsistent that I can live in one state (NH) and be taxed by a state I neither live nor work in (MA) on unemployment benefits from yet a third state (CA) which neither the state of origin nor the state I live in taxes me on -- unless we file separately, in which case we end up paying MA even MORE tax.
The system is broken beyond any possibility of mere repair, and we need to scrap it entirely and start over. Any attempt to do so will probably meet with vast resistance from the legal and accounting industry, though, because the current rolling trainwreck of Federal and state tax codes creates so much business (and so much employment) for tax lawyers and tax accountants.