'Monumentally stupid': Reagan adviser shreds GOP over IRS plan

One of the conditions House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to under the terms of getting a group of far-right holdout lawmakers to stop blocking his election was to hold a serious House vote, for the first time ever, on a proposal known as "FairTax."

An idea that has been kicking around in libertarian circles for decades, FairTax calls for the IRS and all current forms of federal taxation to be abolished and replaced with a 30 percent tax on spending that would apply to everything from retail sales to real estate to anything involving a good or service being paid for. It would also establish what supporters call a "prebate," sending a monthly check to every household that covers the average amount a household would pay in tax for bare essentials like food and medicine.

On Twitter Tuesday, former Ronald Reagan economic adviser Bruce Bartlett demolished the idea as completely unworkable.

"The so-called FairTax is monumentally stupid and has been since the day it was invented some 30 years ago. I lost friends because I said so at the time and many times since. I hope the Stupid Party brings it up for a vote," wrote Bartlett, a fierce critic of the modern GOP. "I am reminded that a big supporter of the Fair Tax was former Ways & Means Committee chairman Bill Archer. Yet despite chairing the committee for years he never introduced a bill to implement it because it's a stupid idea that won't work."

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Bartlett has been warning about the problems with the FairTax plan for years. In 2005, he published a lengthy paper deconstructing how impossible it would be to enforce, how the tax revenues could never fund the modern federal government as we know it, how it would depress wages for workers, and how the whole scheme is probably unconstitutional. He reiterated many of these issues in a Wall Street Journal editorial two years later.

FairTax has next to no chance of passing the Senate even if it passes the House. However, President Joe Biden is already set to blast House Republicans over the proposal in his upcoming economic policy speech, accusing them of moving to raise prices for groceries and other essentials for families at a time when the country is already recovering from the worst inflation in 40 years