What simple fix to our federal laws would create tons of jobs, enhance personal freedom and liberty, reduce intrusions from government, help balance the budget, reduce inequities between taxpayers and free loaders, reduce the drag of litigation on our economy, reduce the influence of lobbyists, cut tons of red tape and save people money?

Answer:

A simple, flat income tax to replace the monstrosity we call our federal tax code.

Throw out our entire federal tax code—bury the son-of-gun in a landfill — and replace it with a simple flat income tax!

Give everyone ONE deduction to reduce the burden on our lowest income families. Set the rate where it makes sense, but low enough to stimulate investment and growth, at, say 10-15 percent, period. End of story and of tax code.

Ironically, some of the most powerful fixes for our broken federal government are elegant and simple. Term limits, a requirement that Congress balance the budget, and a line-item-veto power designed to fight pork, are all examples.

If we held a referendum today on these policies, they would win and be the law of the land. So, who stands between us and the many benefits of a simple flat tax, term limits and other fixes?

You guessed it—Congress!

A flat tax would immediately stimulate growth, reduce unfairness, minimize the underground economy, shift the current benefits of high-paid lobbyists, lawyers and accountants from rich individuals back to regular folks, AND help us fix the horrible inequities created by a piece-meal code that allows nearly 50 percent of wage and income earners to avoid ANY federal tax burden.

A flat income tax code would provide a simple, effective, broad-based and fair tax structure that increases morale and compliance, eliminates double taxation, attacks many problems and unleashes an economy that naturally wants to grow!

The markets will react, making a solution much more difficult. Our enormous role in the world’s economy will result in a global economic meltdown. We will renege on trillions of unfunded payments due generations of contributors to Social Security and Medicare, and impair our ability to defend our nation.

Now, if this country is going to start electing people to attack this looming threat and mitigate the damage, where do you think those kind of leaders will come from? Will they come from Barney Frank’s or Nancy Pelosi’s home town? Will they originate in Chicago or Maryland?

No. If we’re going to save this precious nation, a different kind of leader will have to come from right here, in the nation’s heartland. They’ll have to come from very conservative, practical districts where folks don’t wait at the mail box for government to deliver their way of life; places like the 5th District of Indiana.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and wondering why you continue to get the same result, correct?

So, if this District sends 28-year incumbent Dan Burton back to Washington for what will amount to a 30-month paid vacation, or another career lawyer-politician-party operative like Luke Messer or Mike Murphy, you think we’ll get anything different?

These are the same two God-fearing, family-loving conservatives who in 2005 worked together to expand gambling at race tracks in Shelbyville and Anderson (HB 1569 – HB 1702). Mr. Messer ran against Mike Pence, then moved into the 5th to be jammed into a vacant state legislative seat, only to quit so he could lobby for a big law firm. He spent five years as a party staffer. Mr. Murphy, who I really like and enjoy as a person, has been in the legislature all his adult life and served as a party chief in Marion County. Now, I ask you: Do these chaps sound like anything new or different to you?

This isn’t personal. It’s just that I’m mad and I’m scared. I have three sons growing up in this world, and I want to see REAL change in Washington and fast. I’m tired of sending old school incumbents, insiders and operatives to Washington and expecting them to act like businesspeople, farmers, engineers and statesmen. Let me spell this out, folks –they won’t.

That’s why I’m going to give voters in the 5th District an alternative on May 4th.

EXPECT MORE

In this first-in-a-series, “Follow the Money,” I want to take you through our current representatives’ donation information for the current election cycle.

In a district that stretches as far north as Miami, Wabash, and Huntington counties and as far South as Shelby County, you’d think that the majority of Dan Burton’s money would come from the good people living in the district. Wouldn’t you?

We’ll, I’d hope so, but after combing through his FEC filings, what we actually found was quite alarming. Since January of 2009, nearly 85% of Dan’s money is coming not only from outside of the district, but outside the entire state of Indiana. As you read through his donor list you see, CA, CA, FL, AZ, CA, FL, CA, MD, TX, AZ, FL, CT, Puerto Rico, DE, CT, CA, NY, NY… I think you get the drift.

So the question I ask to you is, why do folks in CA and AZ have such a huge stake in Dan Burton’s reelection? Is Dan running for Congress in Shelbyville, Converse, Tipton and Cicero? Or, is he running in Sacramento, Flagstaff…?

If this bothers you as much as it does me, I’m going to ask you to do two things. First, would you take a second to write a letter to the editor of your local paper pointing out that we need to have a representative in Congress who is supported by Hoosiers – not by out-of-state money? And that it’s time for all of us to elect someone with the best interests of Indiana at heart, not just someone who collects money from every political action committee that throws open its wallet. If you need help with finding the contact info, just contact my office and we’d be glad to help.

Second, would you make a donation from within the district to a candidate that actually wants to represent the people he’s elected by?

We have 54 days left until the primary election on May 4.
Together, we can win this thing, and restore representative government to Washington.

P.S. As you may or may not be aware, all of this information is publically available at FEC.gov, as it is a federal law to report all donations over $250.

When I read about the President’s $3.9 trillion 2011 budget, my heart sunk.  It sounds corny, but having immersed myself of late in the fiscal sickness of our government, the breathtaking size of this new beast struck my senses like a tragic lightning bolt.

Even if Washington were to suddenly grow up and start showing leadership, we may well be past the point of no return and on the road to an historic meltdown in our government, in our economy, and in our way of life.  And, this catastrophe won’t be the product of an outside army, of disease or famine, or the work of illegal immigrants.  Rather, it will be a disaster of our own making.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us,” said Pogo.

The other day, when Congress quietly authorized the Treasury to place another $1.9 trillion on our nation’s credit card, it set the stage to increase debt on our books to nearly $15 trillion.  That means this year, Washington will borrow 40 cents of every dollar it spends.

But, that’s not the whole story.  Right behind the debt owed Chinese and Saudi bondholders is another $50-100 trillion (depending on how long you want to forecast) in obligations to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

In the greatest “ponzi scheme” of all time, Washington already spent the money they promised to keep in “trust funds” and “lock boxes.”  Our government has no money in the bank, is shrinking the tax base, has a sick economy and has no provisions to meet these obligations.

If our leaders were running a household or small business, and they faced this kind of clear and present danger, what might they do?  They might cut spending dramatically.  They might take radical measures to spur increased income or sales (economic growth).  They might retool programs and systems, and try to increase productivity.  Not Washington.

Instead, the President’s budget is full of headlines, like “Increase education spending by over 32 percent.”  “Increase energy program spending by 9.2 percent,” the headlines read, and “increase spending for the Justice Department, Transportation, Defense, NASA.”  In the so-called “agriculture” budget, he proposes to increase spending by nearly 10 percent to $148.6 billion!  And, of course, most of that is for nutrition programs, not farmers.

Watching the country I love commit suicide breaks my heart.  That’s why I’m running for Congress.  Each day, as the headlines hit my senses, my sense of urgency grows.

Well, when you mix these sounds with a close look at the now $14 trillion of public debt on the government’s books (and $50-100 trillion more in commitments to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security recipients), my conclusion about what Americans want and need in government is a new group of “grown-ups.”

What I want, and what I believe a growing number of Americans want, are public servants who place the nation’s interests above their own. They want maturity, judgment, seriousness of mind and a commitment to results — not just rhetoric.

Part of being a grown up in public life — at a time when it is so much needed – is putting forward serious, credible, intellectually consistent ideas and concepts.  That’s why the President’s stimulus plan, and his bizarre mix of spending increases, credit card spending and calls for spending freezes –all at the same time –really makes it hard to take him seriously, regardless of his party or ideology.

Lately, I wonder how folks like Larry Summers, the President’s economic policy advisor, sleeps at night. What does Summers and other credible advisors to the President think when he advocates tax incentives to encourage small business to hire people and raise wages when those same companies don’t have new revenue or new customers to justify such expenditures?  That idea wouldn’t survive a high school economics class.

How do serious people in and around the President feel when they watch him sign a ten percent, across-the-board spending increase in the FY2010 budget just days before he calls for a 3-year freeze in spending?  Do they blush?
How do the President’s advisors reconcile his call for billions more in education spending on the same day he begs for another “blue ribbon commission” designed to force him and Congress out of their drunken debt binge?  What did they think as they sat in on secret negotiations, held just days before the State of the Union address, which resulted in a $1.9 trillion increase to the nation’s credit card?

It’s time for grown-ups to take over government again.  If the Republican party can be the first to prove itself that party, it can and will win the right again to govern, and may well have a modest chance to save this nation from suicide.

Beware of strangers offering gifts:  Our eroding tax base

About one-third of Americans who file annual tax returns pay no federal income tax.  Of those who do pay taxes, the half who earn the least pays less than three percent of all income tax revenues.  Is that a great success story, i.e. less taxes, sticking it to the “rich” etc.?  Or, is it evidence of a tax burden placed on too few, and an unfair, dangerous imbalance within and among American taxpayers?
I say it’s more of the latter.  I prefer a broader, flatter, lower income tax system in which Americans looking right and left in their neighborhood, church pew and work place can assume that their neighbors pay a “fair share” and where we all share a common interest in low, fair and sound tax policies.

In 1986, when Ronald Reagan last lead America to lower and simplify its tax code –a tax code that once again has grown into an abomination – about one-fifth of taxpayers paid no net income taxes.  In 2006, it was one out of three.  With current policies advanced by the President, and by ’08 candidate John McCain, that number will trend toward almost half of taxpayers paying nothing at all!

To move toward fiscal sanity, strong growth, less debt and a more fair form of government, we’ll need to return to a broad shouldered tax policy.

Carmel, IN – January 27, 2010

Indiana Fifth District Republication Congressional candidate Brose McVey today criticized the tepid plans of the Obama administration to deal with the exploding national debt, noting that Congress is about to add nearly $2 trillion to the Nation’s 12.3 trillion credit card balance.

“Our government is literally swimming in some $12.3 trillion – with a “t” – in debt. When you add up all of the I.O.U.’s hanging around the taxpayer’s neck, the total is closer to $100 trillion. And, with regard to Social Security, this reckless shell game amounts to nothing less than the greatest ponzi scheme of all time,” said McVey.

“Tonight, after pushing a budget-busting health care bill, pushing through an across-the-board budget increase of ten percent, and expanding Medicaid, the President is going to try to trick us with a modest, three-year “freeze” in spending? The American public must be getting dizzi. One day we need trillions in bailout funds and new programs. The next day we need gimmicky budget freezes. This silliness would be more amusing if it wasn’t placing the future of this nation at risk.”

McVey is making the rounds in the Fifth District, with an in-depth presentation on the nation’s public debt, offering a three-part approach to avoid the worst-case catastrophe, and seeking public input in a series of forums called “The Coming Storm: Can America Survive the Debt Crisis,” with sessions planned Thursday night, January 28 in Fortville at American Legion (beginning at 5:30PM) and this coming Saturday at the Tipton County Library (at 8:30AM) and the Hoff Room of Manchester College (at 1:00PM.)

“We have to save this country one Congressional District at a time, and I want the leadership on this matter to start right here, right now,” McVey continued. “Whatever you care most deeply about – education, health care, Social Security, or the War on Terror – will no longer matter if we don’t attack this fiscal cancer. Social Security, Medicare, pension protection and FDIC insurance are all backed up by paper I.O.U.’s, and there is no money in our nation’s pipeline to pay for them,” said McVey.

McVey challenged Indiana’s congressional delegation to throw down the gauntlet this month, and oppose the increase in the nation’s debt limit. “Statesmen of both parties need to stand up now and say ‘no more debt.’ Instead, let’s begin debate on massive cuts in spending.”

http://www.tvwebcity.com/index.php?videoID=838#