The Man With No Plan

Fred Thompson has begun to answer voters’ questions. I watched his episode on tax reform. Thompson correctly identified all the problems with the tax code, but if you’re looking for a plan, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Identifying the problems with the tax code is easy. Every candidate, Republican and Democrat knows the tax codes needs to be “simpler, fairer.” Yeah, yeah, every Presidential Candidate I’ve ever seen has said the same thing.

However, when a candidates doesn’t have a plan, not a whole lot happens. That he’ll “consider” the fair tax or flat tax is not a plan. That options will be on the table is not a plan. And as the old saying goes when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I want to take you back to the 2004 Republican National Convention when President Bush said:

Another drag on our economy is the current tax code, which is a complicated mess — filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year. The American people deserve — and our economic future demands — a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system. (Applause.) In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code.

Whatever happened to that? Fail to plan, plan to fail. Tax Reform seems to be like losing weight. At the start of the year, losing weight is on the top of many people’s priorities, but who actually loses? Those who plan a new course of action and follow through.

If you’ve got a general idea we need tax reform, what’s going to happen in Washington? Nuthin’, nada, and zilch. You’ll get to Washington and be focused on other things, Congress won’t move in  your direction and if you think a bi-partisan commission will make major reforms, take a look at what President Bush’s commission produced. The best we get is some tax cuts, which while helping grow the economy don’t address the major issues only working around the edges.

As I count it, there are six candidates (Cox, Huckabee, Hunter, Keyes Paul, and Tancredo ) that support the fair tax and two that support the Flat Tax (Brownback and Giuliani). Now I wouldn’t support many of these candidates for other reasons (especially Rudy Giuliani), they will be more likely to get tax reform done than those who back think the code is too complex but can’t seem to find anything they specifically want to do (McCain, Romney, and Thompson).  Just like the guy who buys a Bow Flex and a South Beach book will probably lose more weight than the guy who will consider buying one.