Mike Huckabee and FBN's Follow the Money Panel: Analysis of the Fair Tax

Fox Business Network's Follow the Money Panel analyzed the Fair Tax. The panel included: Eric Bolling, Steve Adubato, Mike Gallagher, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and David Webb.

Back in September of 2010, Mike Huckabee highlighted the Fair Tax in a response to an editorial attack in the Arkansas Gazette against he and John Boozman, the newly elected Senator of Arkansas: 

Facts and the Fair Tax
"The Fair Tax is hardly a “half-baked” idea. It is the result of over $22 million dollars of scholarly research involving economists from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago, Boston University, and other prestigious universities.

In a nutshell, the Fair Tax is a flat tax, but instead of taxing our productivity (income, investment, savings, capital gains, or inheritance), we are taxed at the point of consumption at the retail level on new items. It is flat, fair, finite, and family friendly. It is totally transparent, unlike the hideous tax structure we currently have and is not a VAT that assesses taxes at production points, but remains largely hidden to the consumer.

The criticism that it would “hurt the poor” is the surest evidence that the critic is ignorant of the pre-bate built into the fair tax, which un-taxes consumption of our basic necessities, and which the studies show actually creates the greatest benefit to those in the lower third of the economy, significant benefit to the middle third of the economy, and some benefit, but less to those in the top third of the economy.

Here’s what the Fair Tax will do:
1. Eliminate the IRS and its indecipherable 67,000 pages of tax code so complex that even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and 41 members of the White House staff seem unable to understand it (or else simply unwilling to comply with it.)
2. Release $13 TRILLION of U. S. capital back into our economy that is presently legally, but unfortunately parked offshore to protect it from the ravenous tax rates.
3. End the nightmarish accounting and legal nightmare for small business operators (and large ones) and allow them to actually make BUSINESS decisions instead of TAX decisions.
4. Eliminate an estimated $500 Billion of expenses related to compliance with the complicated tax code that produces nothing but government paperwork.
5. Virtually eliminate the underground economy by making taxpayers out of illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, gamblers, and others who work “off the books.”
6. Restore a person’s full paycheck—one will receive in many cases his or her first full paycheck with no deductions taken out.
7. Eliminate the hidden and embedded tax on all the things we purchase, which is approximately 22%.

Unfortunate and misguided or perhaps dishonest statements have been made about the Fair Tax, some of which stems from the utterly nutty critique some years ago by Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal who went so far as to try and allege that the Fair Tax was a secret plot of the Church of Scientology. Some point to a supposed study of the Fair Tax by the Bush administration, which was a consumption tax, but not one that involved the all critical pre-bate. Some simply fail to understand the power of the pre-bate for low income earners or have failed to recognize how significantly the political dynamics of Washington would change if Congress were no longer able to manipulate the tax code so as to create winners and losers according to the whims of Congress rather than to the free marketplace.

The so-called “sticker shock” of a 23% tax rate seems ominous until one realizes that with the various payroll taxes, hidden taxes in our purchases, etc., the average American already pays almost 33% in taxes now at the federal level.

The Fair Tax would be a legitimate economic stimulus package by creating a level playing field for manufacturing. When U. S. companies are having to factor in the embedded taxes on our side, but our competitors in China don’t, we have a hard time keeping our manufacturing and our jobs here.

I recommend that one read The Fair Tax by Congressman John Linder and Neal Boortz or the follow-up book by the same authors, The Fair Tax Answers, or go to FairTax.org and then at least base whatever criticism on something other than internet chatter and less than complete understanding of the facts of the Fair Tax."

On January 5, 2011, the Fair Tax Bill, H.R. 25, was introduced in Congress. There are 48 co-sponsors of the bill.  You can use the Fair Tax Calculator to assess the impact on your own finances.

President Obama was asked the question: If the Fair Tax were passed by Congress and you were President, would you sign the bill into law?  President Barack Obama has no answer.

FairTax.org has briefed Obama's staff about the Fair Tax Act. When asked about the Fair Tax, Mr. Obama has said he believes it needs more study. His office has not issued a public position statement on the Fair Tax.

Race42012's own Adam Graham has a post highlighted on the Fair Tax website, We call it the Fair Tax -- not the Perfect Tax,  where he states: 

It's time for opponents of the Fair Tax to explain how to fix the problems with our current tax code without fundamental change rather than trying to find some group of people that may not do as well under a Fair Tax. Consider this, the government pays out $64 billion in Home Mortgage Deductions. Without taking anything else on my list into consideration, is $64 billion in Mortgage Deductions worth $350 billion in tax compliance costs? If not, then this piecemeal selective attack on the Fair Tax is irrelevant. And it's time to have a serious debate.