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Trump and Democrats agree on at least one thing about DeSantis and other GOP presidential hopefuls [1]

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Date: 2023-02-07  

Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Shelby Talcott run down the details of those potential Republican 2024 candidates and their backing of the Fair Tax:

DeSantis, seen as one of the biggest threats to Trump, co-sponsored the national sales tax bill in each of his three terms in the House.

In 2009, explaining his support for the proposal, Pence predicted that “ I expect somebody will attack me for someday,” but said, “you can take even a casual look at this idea and fall in love with it.”

As South Carolina governor, Haley said she would “ support the Fair Tax and any reform that would eliminate income tax.”

While running for Congress in 2010, Pompeo said he “ would certainly support the Fair Tax” and basically any other proposal he saw as lowering taxes.

When Semafor asked the politicians what they thought about the issue now, a Pence spokesperson said he “is supportive of efforts that attempt to reduce the tax burden on hard-working Americans,” while a Pompeo spokesperson said, “The Secretary supports making the tax code simpler, fairer and flatter. And he supports reducing the role the IRS plays intruding into the lives of every American.” (Fairer and flatter are mutually exclusive when it comes to taxes.) Neither DeSantis nor Haley would comment.

Trump is ready to attack them all on this point. Zeballos-Roig and Talcott quote a “source close to Donald Trump” as saying, the other Republicans will have to “answer for what they supported and what they've advocated in the past” and that Trump “would not support a tax that ultimately gives a higher tax rate to lower and middle-income Americans.”

That’s right, Donald Trump has an accurate view of who would pay more if the federal income tax was replaced with a 30% federal sales tax. It’s a terrible, terrible plan that, without a difficult-to-administer “prebates” system included in the latest version proposed in the House, would fall hardest on low-income people. With those prebates, which some Republicans are denouncing as a liberal dream, the burden would instead fall most heavily on middle-income people. Either way, it would be a big giveaway to the wealthiest people—as of 2011, a Tax Policy Center analysis found that it would be a 40% tax cut for the top 1%.

Many House Republicans seem to have figured out that the national sales tax is not a winning issue for them. But a dedicated core continues to push it, and since Kevin McCarthy needed their votes to squeak through as speaker, they’ll at least get a committee process on their bill. And as Republicans run away from the politically toxic idea, remember that it’s been a staple of Republican economic policy for the past couple of decades. They can’t be allowed to wiggle out of this one.

RELATED STORY: There’s lots of reasons this ridiculous national sales tax bill never made it to the House floor

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/7/2151576/-Trump-and-Democrats-agree-on-at-least-one-thing-about-DeSantis-and-other-GOP-presidential-hopefuls

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