Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, has a problem with the Sixteenth Amendment.  He wants to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service and replace the income tax with a consumption-based tax called the Fair Tax.  As he writes in his best-selling book, Do the Right Thing,

The tax system of our nation is broken.  Badly broken.  Worse than that, it's beyond repair. We need a total overhaul of a system so complicated that not even the government agency charged with overseeing it understands it...Many of our current economic challenges are not merely the normal cyclical issues of the ebb and flow of the economy.  We face something much more serious than cyclical challenges of the marketplace.  We are confronted with structural issues that will require major changes in the system itself. (1)

The power to tax is the power to control. Our Constitution originally gave as one of its enumerated powers of Congress the right:

...to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl.1)

The Constitution also made clear that direct taxes were to be apportioned according to the population (Art. 1, Sec. 9, Cl. 4).  They were also to be uniform throughout the United States (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 1).  The income tax was at first declared unconstitutional because it was a direct tax that was not apportioned. (2)

Until 1802, the Federal government derived the funds it needed from internal excise taxes.  For a short time during the Civil War an income tax was tried; it was enacted in 1892 but was declared unconstitutional.  In 1909, Congress called a tax assessed against corporations an excise tax, even though it was apportioned by income.  Then, in 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified by the needed majority vote of the states, and taxes were no longer apportioned among the States. (3)

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration." - Amendment XVI to the Constitution. 

Now, Governor Huckabee and others are proposing a major overhaul in the way our federal government procures its tax funds.  They want to reduce the excessive power government holds over people, to unfairly take their hard-earned income.  In his inimitable way, Huckabee describes what a Fair Tax would do:

Under the FairTax, no one would be taxed—that is, penalized—for their work, investments, savings, or earnings.  After all, we want people to work, save, invest, and create capital, so we should cease to penalize it at all.  Income tax rates would be zero.  Corporate tax would be zero.  Payroll taxes would disappear.  Savings and investments would no longer be subject to the complicated tax codes.  The tax rate on capital gains would be zero.  There would be no paycheck deductions...Doing away with the idea of take-home pay is pretty good, but the best part?  We eliminate the IRS.  It would mean that  April 15 would be just another beautiful spring day and not the day we dread and scurry about trying to go through shoe boxes full of little pieces of paper and receipts to find deductions. (4)

The increasingly powerful federal government has had a field day since 1913, using funds generated by ever-increasing income taxes and other taxes raised at the expense of the profits of businesses large and small, and from hard-working taxpayers.  Those especially hard hit are those who try the hardest—those who work hard, invest much, and take risk.  Those who are profiting from the income tax revenue are not those who have earned it but those who are now entitled by the government to its programs.  The latest Health Care Reform Bill is yet another liberal plan of entitlement and thus control—for the government giveth and taketh away at will.

The common use of loopholes and other evasions of tax under the present system are further reasons why Huckabee feels that repealing the Sixteenth Amendment and instituting a FairTax is needed:

[Taxation by consumption] would also virtually eliminate the underground economy.  Part of the reason that taxes on people like you and me are so high is that we are not only paying our own taxes, but we are having to make up for all the people who don't join us in the lovely joy of contribution because they work under the table in underground economy.  Do you think that drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, or people in this country illegally are filling out the same IRS tax forms each year and reporting the money they illegally earned?  Of course, they don't fill out the forms or pay the taxes.  And because they don't pay tax on what they earn, you pay the taxes for you and for those who cheated the system. (5)

The Fair Tax would benefit our economy by growing Gross Domestic Product by 10.5 percent, capital stock by 42%, labor supply by 4%, output by 12%, and real wages by 8%.  It would get rid of all the hidden taxes that corporations pay that are passed on to us.  The FairTax would bring back offshore business taxes that are not paid. (6)

Huckabee predicted in 2008 that "if the average American really understood the total tax burden, there might just be another Boston Tea Party.  But I fear the next one wouldn't be as civil." (7)  I believe the Tea Party movement is part of an awakening to the unfairness and unconstitutionality of big government's tax and spend policies.  People are awakening, yes, but the movement has been marked by mostly civil, though outspoken and persistent, protest.  Yes, people have been angry, but to their credit they have become newly motivated to turn to the Constitution, not to rioting.  Meanwhile, Pelosi and other Democrats are asking for "party crashers" to infiltrate the Tea Party movement to make protesters appear ignorant (misspelling signs), racist, and violent.  Most attendees will tell you that they see instead patriotic, informed, and civil citizens and business owners at the rallies.  People who wave the American flag, distribute copies of the Constitution, dress up as historical personalities, and sing patriotic songs.  But they do not throw racial epithets.  We might suspect that the rare rabble-rousers are planted by the liberals.

I believe the Sixteenth Amendment provided the fuel for increasing the power and the socialization of the American government.  Because the income tax system begun in 1913 was progressive and not proportional or uniform, the net effect on our nation has been a trend toward more socialistic legislation and programs.  Politicians have more power to tinker when they have more money.  It is no accident that great entitlement legislation followed closely after the power to tax income, or that Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to amass such power over the economy.  Today, the "tax and spend" fever has reached a new all-time high, with the Obama administration and Congress tacking on ever-increasing programs, regulations, and taxes.  It is time we turn this around, as Huckabee says, starting with an overhaul of the taxation system:

We're hit with hidden taxes, and the corporate rate is so high that it forces U.S. companies to go elsewhere.  But things get even worse.  A business making something here in the United States finds itself at such a disadvantage relative to those who create and manufacture that same item overseas...In a time of huge trade deficits (especially with China), the miracle is that businesses attempting to manufacture in the United States are able to survive at all.  Truth is, they probably wouldn't, had it not been for the innovation of technology and the sweat equity of high productivity from the American worker.  Our workers have to work more efficiently just to overcome the built-in disadvantage created by their own government.  Imagine how truly competitive we would be if Congress wasn't bending the rules to help the other side. (8)

Imagine indeed!  Imagine how helpful to our nation's economy and freedom it would be if the courts would turn the tide of government's over-reaching powers by declaring the Health Care Reform Bill unconstitutional.  Imagine what a boost it would be if our national economy was infused with the $12 trillion lost to trade imbalance with China and offshore business accounts across the world.  Then imagine overturning the Sixteenth Amendment and putting in place a Fair Tax that would eliminate much of the corruption, loopholes, and unfairness in our present system.  Imagine the Constitution again being read and taught in our land. 

I am into imagining "change we can really believe in" today.



(1) Mike Huckabee, Do the Right Thing. (New York, NY:  Penguin Group (Sentinal), 2008), pg. 153.
(2) The Volume Library,  (Nashville TN: The Southwestern Company, 1980), pg. 910.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Huckabee, pg. 155
(5) Ibid., pg. 156
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid., pg. 157
(8) Ibid., pg. 159