It’s time for me to get all populist on you folks.
There was a little bit of buzz last week in conservative circles about a bill introduced by Congressman John Carter of Texas. Dubbed “The Rangel Rule”, H.R. 735 allows the rest of us to get away with the same trick Congressman Charlie Rangel of New York and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have managed to pull – owing or paying back taxes without penalties or interest.
In the novel Animal Farm, some of the protagonists George Orwell created were “more equal than others.” Apparently this is holding true for elected officials as well, and for every Rod Blagojevich who’s ejected from office for malfeasance it seems there’s ten who get away scot-free with some sort of criminal act. Nor is it exclusive to Democrats, but they tend to have the preponderance of cases where conflicts of interest or graft occur. Methinks this is because they tend to favor a more powerful and centralized system of governance.
While H.R. 735 was introduced as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek measure, there is a principle involved and as I see the proposal it can be a small step to accomplishing two further milestones on the path toward making ours a freer and more prosperous nation.
Carter’s proposal shows that there are some in our society who see their elected or appointed position as a way to enrich themselves. By getting into a place where they can wheel and deal with legislation and favors, many of weak character see themselves as kingmakers rather than the representatives of the people in whose service they were originally expected to perform.
This is a potentially fatal flaw to a democracy if left unchecked, but one way to combat this would be to reduce the amount of money each of these Huey Long wannabes are entrusted to spread around through increasing the amount of money remaining in the pockets of the rest of us by revamping the system of tax collection to one based on consumption. This is a point I’ve made many times before so I won’t belabor it here.
More importantly, even the most expert tax attorneys and quite often the IRS have a difficult time interpreting the labyrinth of tax rules and regulations which are already in place, let alone all the “fixes” applied by Congress in numerous bills they pass each year. Obviously this doesn’t excuse outright cheating but millions of Americans make billions of dollars’ worth of mistakes figuring out their annual tax toll. It’s a consequence of a system which is tinkered with daily in order to give advantages to favored lobbying groups or desired behaviors, such as buying a house or installing solar panels.
The principle of using the tax code to regulate behavior is rather odious to me because it provides rewards and punishments far beyond what the free market and one’s ambition would normally entail. As it stands today our progressive tax code penalizes success and makes those less successful into wards of the state, waiting for handouts they never earned but by virtue of their income status become “entitled” to receive.
We do not elect our representatives to become wealthy through their service, but somehow most of them do. And while in principle there should be nothing that precludes individual campaigns for Federal office to cost many millions or even north of one billion dollars, it’s worth pausing to consider why so much skin is placed in the game and what can be done to make things better for the rest of us.
