Some of the comments most often heard from FAIRtax supporters are:
- Everyone I talk to about the FAIRtax ends up thinking that it is a great idea.
- No one likes the income tax.
- Everyone wants to get their whole paycheck.
- When people understand the prebate/tax credit, they see that it is better for lower and middle income people than the income/payroll tax.
- My friends agree that it will adequately fund Social Security and keep it solvent—something the current system won’t do.
- My friends see how the FAIRtax will show everyone the real costs of the federal government and why that is important.
- When I write a letter to my Members of Congress about the FAIRtax, all I get back are generic form responses that don’t really address the points I made.
- Even though my Member of Congress is a co-sponsor, he/she doesn’t ever say anything about the FAIRtax.
- The media ignores the FAIRtax.
Here are some of the reasons why the Ruling Class can exercise so much control over our elected Members of Congress.
Costs of Election
According to opensecrets.org, in the 2020 federal election cycle, the candidates for the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the 33 seats in the U.S. Senate that were up for re-election spent a total of $8,703,050,547. Yes, that is almost $9 billion dollars in one election cycle alone.
If you divide $8,703,050,547 by the total of 468 seats that were up for grabs, this comes out to $18,596,262 per seat. Of course, that’s just an average. In actuality, some races were more expensive than that, others less so, but even the less expensive races still cost a LOT of money Most of the candidates who get elected are going to earn a salary of $174,000 per year. A few in leadership will make $193,000 and Nancy Pelosi makes $223,500.
Do the math. On average, the candidates spent 107 times more money running for office than they will make serving in office.
This is why Members of Congress will admit, privately, that they spend a good deal of time every day trying to raise the money they need to finance their re-election campaigns. Where do they get most of that money? Obviously, it has to be from people and groups that have large amounts of money to donate. But people don’t just give that kind of money to candidates without expecting something in return. So, when big money tax lobbyists who make millions of dollars buying tax favors for their clients tell Members of Congress not to openly push for the FAIRtax, the Members obey.
Sources of Money
Opensecrets.org reports that President Trump raised 48.85% of his total of $773,954,555 from small donors (donations less than $200). Candidate Biden raised 38.94% of his total of $1,044,187,828 from small donors. The remainder came from larger donors—51.15% for Trump, 61.06% for Biden.
The percentage of small donor to large donor contributions varies for each individual Congressional race, but most of the donations that political candidates receive come from larger donors.
Lobbyists
One of the biggest sources of campaign money for candidates is lobbyists. Opensecrets.org reports that federal lobbyists received $3.5 billion dollars in 2020. Lobbyists serve two main functions. One is to collect money that can then be passed on to Members of Congress through fundraisers and other donations and secondly, to provide a place of employment for retired Members of Congress who can guarantee their lobbying firms access to sitting Members of Congress.
Members of Congress who cooperate with the desires of the lobbyists will generally receive large campaign donations while they’re in Congress, and a future job if they want it when they leave Congress. In addition, many lobbyists offer jobs at huge salaries to family members of sitting Representatives and Senators.
According to Opensecrets.org, there are 447 former members of Congress who are actively lobbying the current Congress.
Lobbyists have been quite happy to see all the changes being proposed by the Biden administration. For the most part, those changes are aimed at people and groups that can afford to pay lobbyists enormous fees. They’re willing to pay those fees in an effort to minimize the adverse effects these policy changes will have on them. So as usual, the people who can afford to buy favors get off easy while the rest of us pay for their breaks.
Political Action Committees and Other Groups
The Senate Leadership Fund, a fund that donates to Republicans, received $434,500,000 from individual donors giving $200 or more. Much of this was donated to candidates in 2020. The Senate Majority PAC that donates to Democrats received and spent $372,000,000 in 2020.
The Ruling Class and their minions in Congressional leadership will reward members of Congress who do what they are told. They’ll make sure that those members receive large donations from groups that the Ruling Class control or can influence.
On the other hand, members who don’t go along not only get little to nothing in the way of donations, they often find that big money is suddenly backing their opponents.
The Ruling Class and their minions in Congress love the fact that huge amounts of money will be spent in 2021 and 2022 by groups lobbying to shield themselves from Biden’s proposed income tax changes.
No doubt there are some people in Congress who see the advantages of the FAIRtax over the income tax. However, party leaders on both sides of the aisle want to keep the gravy train firmly on the tracks. They want to keep a corrupt, complicated, incomprehensible, unfair income/payroll tax system in place because they make a lot of money for their campaign coffers by tinkering with it at the behest of the lobbyists.
In that environment, members who have good things to say about the FAIRtax learn rather quickly that being too vocal in their support for getting rid of the income tax can have rather painful consequences.
CONCLUSION
Does all the above mean that there is no chance to see the FAIRtax enacted? Absolutely not. Sun Tzu was a military strategist and advisor to a Chinese king around 500 BC. He wrote The Art of War. The following quote from his book applies here.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
By knowing the “enemy”, we can expose them and defeat them. They can only operate if the people they are stealing from can be persuaded to think that others are to blame. They desperately don’t want us to pull back the curtain and see who they really are—people who produce nothing but are parasites on the rest of us.
As the humorist P.J. O’Rourke said,
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
It is time that Americans take control of our country by eliminating the income/payroll tax system. No more games that profit only the Ruling Class and their minions the politicians. ENACT THE FAIRTAX!
If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to FAIRtax.org. Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.
Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax.
Remember, if we don't continue to tell the truth and demand a change, then this quote from George Orwell's 1984 may foretell our children's future:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Is it hopeless? When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”