Subject: Panel Swings and Misses Comment: Americans for Fair Taxation today blasted the Presidential Panel tasked with suggesting fundamental changes to the tax system as, “Fraudulent political theater designed to protect the corrupt tax code and those who profit from its manipulation,” said Leo Linbeck, Chairman of the national grassroots organization. "When a Presidential Panel engages in such activities it does a disservice to the American people and to President Bush." Linbeck was reacting to early reports of the findings of the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. “They are moving around the deck chairs on a sinking ship but are trying to convince the American public that they are moving mountains,” said Linbeck. The Panel's report is due out on November 1. “The fact that the main proposals to emerge are limits on health insurance and mortgage interest deductions reveal the usual Washington mindset of how to more efficiently shear the taxpaying sheep,” said Linbeck. “We must have hit a nerve with our growing grassroots demand for a national retail sales tax because the panel ignored our multi-million research effort defining the proposed plan and instead invented their own phony and flawed national sales tax program and then found it wanting. The Panel went to great lengths to conceal the substance of the Fairtax proposal.” said Linbeck. “The Fair Tax deserves a fair hearing, instead, the Panel was driven by the very Washington insiders and tax lobbyists who now profit so handsomely through manipulation of the tax code. ” “While every American knows perfectly well that well-heeled lobbyists are manipulating the federal tax code for profit, this Panel somehow ignored that reality and substituted cowardly politics for strong action. In the process they employed limited findings and let the American people, as well as President Bush, down,” said Linbeck. “Although the Commission was charged with recommending fundamental change to an admittedly dysfunctional federal tax system, they have made it clear they will only propose tinkering around the edges of the current system to eliminate past Washington driven ‘reforms’ like the Alternative Minimum Tax. It is painfully obvious that Washington, D.C. insiders so closely linked with the status quo cannot be trusted to overturn the corrupt system of federal taxation. This effort will have to be driven by the American people," said Linbeck. |