A short while back I came across an “X” exchange between Travis Media Group and Radio Host Mary Walter (@MaryWalterRadio). Travis Media was poking (rightly-deserved) fun/derision at the Democrat mayor of Denver, who had cut $8 million from police and $2.5 million from firefighters, yet managed to find 90 million for illegal alien squatters in his city. Ms. Walter pointed out that it is all well and good to take a (rhetorical) poke at Democrats early and often, but in this case it might be premature. As Walter correctly explained that it likely won’t be the Blue states/cities that will bear the ultimate brunt of their failed fiscal policies. It will be Red states and cities who have behaved more frugally that will end up paying the bill. Here is their short thread.
We can laugh all we want at these ideologues but in the end, the responsible states are going to be forced to bail out the liberal states. https://t.co/MPM2mg7f0q
— Mary Walter (@MaryWalterRadio) April 17, 2024
As all of my friends, family and class “B” dependents know, being reticent about participating in a verbal flogging of leftists, isn’t one of my strong points. I therefore piled on by saying that this was yet another datapoint in support of repealing the 16th Amendment.
Perfect reason to repeal the 16th Amendment and have the states, severally, remit their share of. taxes to FedGov….or, depending on situation…not. That would at once reinstate the proper relationship between the states and FedGov.@MaryWalterRadio @TheReckoningTNT… https://t.co/PxgaPmIHxn
— American Free News Network (@AfnnUsa) April 17, 2024
Ms. Walter PM’d me and asked if, “you guys” (American Free News Network) had an article out on this topic, as she was doing prep for her upcoming stand-in on the David Webb Show. Sadly I was unable to help just then. However, it did get me thinking about this subject in more detail and I decided to put down some thoughts on this issue.
The first thing that came to mind, was that it sort of reminded me of the current student loan debacle. On one side, we have those who work hard and pay off their own loans….likely because they majored in a degree that can actually help them earn a living; OR never got student loans in the first place, because they sought out and got vocational training and are now living good lives, absent that particular financial worry. On the other side, we have those who took out loans for useless degrees; degrees that qualify them merely to sling coffee and write life advice on the outside of their customers’ cups. These irresponsible folks are now demanding that those who acted responsibly, bail them out.
President Biden, despite being spanked by SCOTUS on this very issue, decided to go ahead and do it anyhow, to the tune of a half-TRILLION dollars. Given previous experience, it’s likely that SCOTUS will also strike down this additional vote-buying effort by Biden. Yet, he has so far and despite SCOTUS rulings, managed to “forgive” 144 Billion is student debt. If he had gotten his way, he would have cancelled almost half a TRILLION so far.
So far, the Biden administration has canceled nearly $144 billion in federal student loan debt. That’s one-third of the $430 billion that would’ve been canceled under the president’s one-time forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year, and 9% of all outstanding federal student loan debt.
READ: See how much student loan debt Biden has canceled
That brings me back to the initial construct by which our brilliant Framers built the governing document under which these United States have prospered for over 200 years. In the beginning, there was no such thing as an income tax at the Federal level. The central government of supposed-to-be-of-limited-powers, would be fed by tariffs and by revenues apportioned among the states, severally and according to population.
The creation of an individual income tax, coupled with the ability of a central, federal government to freeze or confiscate your assets, created a huge imbalance of power between the individual and the the government created to serve and protect him. In a tax dispute between the individual and the Federal Government, the individual is presumed wrong and must prove he is right in order to get his money back. It’s asset forfeiture on steroids. When it comes to the level of Red States (like my home state of Alabama) having to pay for the bad decisions of Blue States (like California) it has morphed into a form of armed robbery, writ large.
In the example above, once Denver has blown through its entire budget on the illegal aliens it “sanctuary citied” in, it will almost certainly request additional funding from the Federal government. The same will obtain when Governor Hair Gel Newsom, out in the People’s Republik of Kalifornia, runs out of taxpaying citizens to pay for his high speed rail that itself, appears to be going from nowhere to nowhere.
This is where repeal of the 16th Amendment comes into play. Repeal and “apportionment among the states” would once again put the states severally, in charge of collecting their share of revenues to pay for the constitutional purposes of the Federal government. This would add sorely needed reinforcement to the sadly dilapidated concept of Federalism. It would also place state and local governments between the individual and the Federal government.
The single most important benefit, is that it would reenforce the idea of checks and balances. One of the quickest ways to get somebody’s or some entity’s attention is to cut off the money. States withholding money from the ravening maw of the federal leviathan, or credibly threatening to do so, might give pause to some of the grosser fiscal indignities inflected on the public. At least it would cause some of the 535 Senators and Congressmen, to at least give lip service to the 9th and 10th Amendments. Going forward and to make this really effective, we should also repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to the state legislatures electing Senators…but that’s for another day.
Mike Ford is a retired Infantry Officer who writes mainly on Military and Foreign Policy, while occasionally dabbling in Political and Economic matters. A graduate of West Point, Ford has widespread experience, ranging from military, local law enforcement and developing technology solutions for special operations applications. Now semi-retired, Ford is a sometime contributor to various publications such as RedState and American Thinker and Canada Free Press. He is now the CEO and Managing Editor for American Free News Network (AFNN.us). Ford speaks Russian & Spanish, and is a licensed pilot with an Instrument Rating.
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I’m a whole of government person when it comes to analyzing problems for possible solutions.
That said, the income tax (and the VAT that has gotten a lot of traction in Europe) are both just symptoms of a government that is trying to do too much and spending too much in the process. In Europe the individual countries don’t have the federal structure that the US has, Germany is close but it falls short in many ways to what we have in this country.
In the US’ federal system, it’s not enough that our representatives in DC try to spend less, it’s necessary that the states refuse to take federal monies to operate at the state and local levels, and they prohibit the spending of the state’s monies on state-level responsibilities so that the pressure to spend more in DC is eliminated.
But, for all of that to work, the states need to stop accepting federal monies for what is, Constitutionally, their responsibilities and, the like-minded, need to band together to stop their monies from being siphoned off of their citizens and given to other states’ ‘needy’.
The individual income tax is the thing which enables class warfare, as the lower earners, and welfare malingerers, can try to soak the more productive, higher-earning people, the people who were doing the right thing all along. This is the reason I am against the so-called flat tax as well, in which everyone would be charged the same percentage of their income.
No, individuals should be taxed the same dollar amount, not a percentage of their income. There is no reason that Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates should pay more in taxes than Mike Ford.
So glad to see your note, Dana. I agree completely.
I first came over to that side of the argument about 40 years ago when the government put Leona Helmsley in jail for having paid (allegedly) two million less than owed in a two year period in which she paid sixty million in taxes.
How on earth can any system be considered remotely fair when one person is taxed the total earnings of 1200 fellow citizens put together?
And they all have the same vote. Just one each.
I have always believed that the head tax is the only fair approach. Then if the government wants to raise more revenue, it had better ensure a stronger economy so that EVERYBODY can afford to pay more in taxes.
It’ll probably never happen, but it really is the only fair approach in a republic.
JFD