Don’t just degrade, get rid of.
Via The Hill:
The IRS has been a common target of 2016 Republican presidential candidates’ ire.
That played out during Thursday’s debate when Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Florida) tussled over the agency’s future.
Cruz criticized Rubio for leaving “the IRS code in with all of the complexity,” while Rubio said the agency couldn’t actually be scrapped as Cruz has proposed because some entity would need to collect Cruz’s proposed value-added tax.
But while Cruz is one of only a few candidates who have explicitly called for eliminating the IRS, all of the candidates have attacked the agency.
Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University, said that Republicans like to attack the IRS because they like to criticize income taxes as well as government and bureaucracy.“The IRS is one of the less popular parts of government,” he said.
While candidates who call for eliminating the IRS may think that it will be difficult to implement that pledge, calling for the agency’s abolition is a “powerful symbol” and a “rallying cry,” Zelizer said.