About that VAT

It's a little frightening. With more and more talk of the Value Added Tax, or VAT, or National Sales Tax....whatever you want to call it....the more real the prospects of its implementation become.

The latest major analysis of it came from George Will:

When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it -- after the 16th Amendment is repealed.

A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government.

Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration -- which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better -- has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated. During the downturn, federal revenues plunged and spending soared. And, as will happen for two decades, every day 10,000 more baby boomers are joining the ranks of recipients of Medicare and Social Security, two programs with unfunded liabilities of nearly $107 trillion.

In the context of this concatenation of troubles, the administration's highest priority was to put an enormous new health care entitlement on the welfare state's rickety scaffolding. Why? Because the liberals' lunge to maximize government's growth depends on quickly creating a crisis that can be called a threat to the entitlement menu, and to the currency as a store of value. Then the public can be panicked into accepting the addition of a VAT to the existing menu of taxes.

The VAT is real. Where does Ohio's congressional delegation stand?

Do they support it? Like Will, are they for it as long as the income tax is eliminated? Are they simply leaving the door open? Or totally against it all cost?

With all this new spending, the dollars have to come from somewhere. And with all the talk about the VAT, it seems it just may be the answer for the Democratic majority.

The voters deserve to know the answer.