Fox may not love Senator Ted Cruz’ presidential candidacy but that doesn’t mean they don’t love at least part of his platform. Yesterday, radio talk show host Gina Loudon visited Your World to suggest other Republican candidates adopt his plan to abolish the IRS.
Loudon started off her interview by saying it was time to get rid of the IRS.
LOUDON: It’s time, and I’m so thankful that Ted Cruz used his national platform at his announcement really to challenge other candidates who are going to jump in this race to comment on this and tell us their plans. Because this is something that has long needed to happen. The IRS, as you know, Neil, has become much more than a tax collection agency. It’s become a spy agency on the American people, and it’s also become an arm of one of our political parties. It’s all wrong.
Loudon also ridiculously likened the IRS to Google.
LOUDON: I have to compare the IRS, with its more than 100,000 employees, to a company for example like Google, who obviously has a pretty big workload, but they manage to do it with 31,000 people.
But the IRS wasn’t the only part of government Loudon wants to destroy. She said she likes “shutting down the Fed and eliminating the income tax in favor of a flat sales tax.”
Rather than challenge her in any substantial way, Cavuto smiled and said, “You got a lot in there,” and “I don’t think she’s a fan of these institutions.”
But as easy as it is to hate the IRS, there are lots of reasons not to abolish it. In a Washington Post editorial, columnist Catherine Rampell laid out why such a move would be a “phenomenally bad idea.” Among other reasons, she pointed out that somebody has to collect the money to keep the government functioning and paying for things like Medicare and the military. And she noted, “The IRS is a cash-flow-positive agency, collecting an estimated $255 for every $1 appropriated to it, and dumping it would vastly widen existing government deficits.”
Yet none of that was mentioned.
Watch the “fair and balanced” discussion below, from yesterday’s Your World.
