It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many sleepless nights for too many Americans, especially at this time of year.

So, it's no wonder why Ted Cruz is promising to abolish the IRS. It's such a crucial aspect of his platform that he mentioned it twice during his Super Tuesday victory speech in Texas because, for middle-aged Republican voters, it's way better fapping material than naked pics of Sarah Palin. And Ted Cruz, with his skeevy face and Glengarry salesman mendacity, has no choice but to roll out the big guns in order to compensate for his unprecedented repulsiveness -- booger mishap and all.

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Too bad it's a pipe dream.

During various Cruz stump speeches and television spots, the loathsome senator with his punch-me face can be heard to pledge three things related to taxes:

1) A 10 percent flat-tax.

2) Tax returns filed on postcard-sized forms.

3) No more IRS.

The question that ought to immediately spring to mind for anyone paying attention is this: Where the hell do we send our postcard-sized tax returns if the IRS doesn't exist any more? I've asked this question repeatedly on the Bob & Chez Show as well as throughout social media, and not a single Cruz supporter has bothered to answer.

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Consequently, I did some digging myself and discovered the truth.

Ted Cruz absolutely doesn't plan to abolish the IRS after all. Instead, Cruz intends to shrink the size of the agency. How do we know this? Cruz's campaign website says so:



The remaining [IRS] personnel needed can be housed in a drastically smaller division of the Department of Treasury.

So, he's going to simply downsize the IRS, rather than abolish it. Maybe he'll call it something else -- the Shminternal Shmevenue Shmervice. Whatever the new title might be, it's obvious that he's lying about abolishing it.

Worse, even the conservative National Review believes abolishing the IRS is a major mistake. Patrick Brennan writes, "The problem: The idea probably isn’t feasible and has almost no merits as a public policy." Brennan goes on to describe the "implausibility and unseriousness" of Cruz's ridiculous plan.

Indeed, Republican tax policy mandates a larger revenue collection process, not a smaller one.

Some moves toward a better, more pro-growth tax system could actually mean more federal employees, not fewer. Republican tax plans, for instance, generally propose moving to what’s called a territorial tax system, ending the taxation of income American citizens and companies earn abroad. That would require new IRS resources, AEI’s Viard says, to make sure that companies don’t exploit this change to evade taxation.

But it's an obvious hunch that Republican voters love the plan because they believe they'll more easily be able to do just that -- to evade paying their taxes. If so, it's a major contradiction insofar as many Republicans, as well as many red states, rely upon federal assistance in order to make ends meet. And they justify their fealty to socialism by insisting they pay more into the system than the so-called "takers."

Additionally, we all know by now that a flat tax is regressive, punishing lower income earners more than higher income earners. Lower income earners won't get much of a tax break, if any at all, while millionaires will get a colossal break. Plus, wealthy Americans can more easily afford to pay 10 percent of their incomes to Cruz's, um, Shminternal Shmevenue Shmervice. We've also learned through many years of failed trickle-down that the super-rich don't reinvest their tax savings on job creation. Instead, they squirrel it away in savings and the like. Expert after expert agree that the economy isn't stimulated by preserving tax cuts for the rich, yet offering breaks to middle and working class Americans produces a greater stimulative effect. In other words, if we absolutely have to spend money on tax cuts, why not balloon the deficit on tax cuts that actually grow the economy?

Ted Cruz, like any sleazy salesman, is making shit up. I'm shocked he's never referred to it as the "Cadillac of tax plans." He's lying to his own people and taking them for the low-information doofs they are. Because this is what he does. Fortunately for him, taxes and economics are difficult to understand, and he's cynically exploiting the ignorance of his people as much as he can before he's banished from the presidential race back to the U.S. Senate.