Rand Paul's Taxing Ordeal

Another week, another Rand Paul "libertarian" position screwing over Kentucky's poor that he has to completely reverse himself on.  Evan McMorris-Santoro at TPM spells it out:

Kentucky's Republican nominee for Senate, Rand Paul, is running away from his past support for abolishing the federal income tax in favor of a national sales tax, according to reports on the ground in the Bluegrass State.

The move is the latest walkback from the past for Paul, who started out the campaign as some kind of libertarian-tea party hybrid, unafraid to talk on national television about things like the problems he saw in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Since winning the nomination, however, Paul has headed in pretty much a straight line toward establishment Republican policies when it comes to his campaign rhetoric. The national sales tax shift appears to be part of that trend.

Some conservatives have long called for the abolition of the 16th Amendment -- which created the income tax -- and the creation of a national sales tax as high as 25 cents on the dollar in its place. They argue the sales tax would be more fair. Detractors say it would hit low-income taxpayers the hardest, pretty much undoing exactly what the progressive income tax structure was supposed to do in the first place. Paul used to be one of those who called for a national sales tax, according to reports, though now he claims he never was.

But Rand Paul's record  only had one weakness:  Google!

On Tuesday, the AP reported that Americans For Fair Taxation, a national sales tax advocacy group, sent reporters a written statement from Paul showing his support for the proposal:

"The federal tax code is a disaster no one would come up with if we were starting from scratch," Paul said in the statement. "I support making taxes flatter and simpler. I would vote for the FairTax to get rid of the Sixteenth Amendment, the IRS and a lot of the control the federal government exerts over us."

The AP reported that Paul's campaign "verified" the statement when asked about it. Paul didn't seem to keen to discuss it himself, however. He "declined to answer questions on the issue during a campaign stop," the AP reported.

Kentucky has been one of the hardest hit states during this economic disaster, and Rand Paul's prescription to fix it is a national sales tax, which of course would hurt those who have limited incomes and have to use that income to buy staples like food, not to mention there's a terrific argument that people who could afford to get by with purchasing little would choose to do so rather than pay 25% sales tax on big ticket items, which would of course reduce demand in our consumption-driven economy.

Talk about a job-killing tax, this one's about as bad as you can get.  Hurts the poor coming, hurts aggregate demand going.  Rand Paul suddenly no longer thinks this is a good idea like he did earlier.

Funny.  For a "maverick outsider" Rand Paul seems to know an awful lot about reversing his positions to take the GOP corporate stance time and time again.