RUSH: Here’s my idea. In addition to illegal immigration, many of us in this country are fed up with the federal tax system. We’re just fed up with it. But over the years we’ve been intimidated into obeying. We call on our patriotism tendencies and our desires to do the right thing and so forth, but admit it: We’re also scared to death that that’s the one thing the federal government will not stop looking for until they find it, and that’s every tax cheat in the country. But yet we need reform of this system. We need to reform it.
I mean, the tax code is punitive. Fewer and fewer people are paying federal income taxes, so the opportunity to reform the program is soon to vanish because once the minority is the one paying taxes and the majority of people are not paying federal income taxes, you have no hope for reform. So how do we do it? Well, we’ve tried any number of ways. We’ve proposed legislation. We have had books written. We have had speeches given. We have had pamphlets printed. Nothing works, and the reason is that members of Congress are just not going to give up the single greatest power they have, and that’s social architecture that they can engage in with the tax code.
So, since Senator Specter and since Senator McCain and all the supporters of this amnesty program say, “Well, 12 million, 11 million? We can’t do anything about it! We’ve got to come up with some way to deal with them already here because we can’t deport them.” Fine, how about if I we — and I’m speaking hypothetically, just toying with this idea — but how about if I, El Rushbo, were to write a tax book, and the idea I have is that we just stop paying taxes. Now, just bear with me on this. Just stop paying ’em. What if 40 or 50 million of us just refused to pay taxes. What are they going to do? (interruption) Well, Mr. Snerdley is yelling that they will get me. I will sacrifice myself for the good of the cause. But if 40 or 50 million — it’s hypothetical — refuse to pay taxes, what are they going to do? They don’t have that many IRS agents; they don’t have that much jail space. They might actually build jails for this, though (laughing) and call it the Rush Limbaugh Correctional Facility. They might actually do it. But then what would have to happen because the government obviously needs revenue, we need for our government to perform various basic functions. But it could be a way to change the tax code, because if 40 or 50 million people just said, “The hell with it and dropped out,” they’d have to come up with an alternative way of raising the money, and that’s how we would get reform. That’s how we would get the FairTax, the flat tax, a national sales tax, or whatever it is, one that we couldn’t avoid paying because it would arrive every time we spent money.
Now, you say, “Well, Rush, how do you we avoid paying when taxes are withheld?” I understand. I understand that. There are ways around this, but that burden would fall on the shoulders of those who are self-employed and who do not have taxes withheld. It probably would lead to changing a law in five seconds that would require everybody have taxes withheld. (laughing) But my point is if the number of illegals is simply too large to deal with, the number of criminals is simply too large to deal with, and you’re not going to have any enforcement mechanism, then all of this is just a bunch of jabberwocky about immigration. It’s just designed to placate you and pander to you to make you think that they reeeeeally mean it this time.
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