Albert Barger, Indiana Libertarian for US Senate

The direct taxation of income is the root of most political evil. It directly enters us all into servitude, with the government siphoning off whatever money they want before we ever see it. It provides the funds for every kind of big government scheme that comes down the pike. It is uniquely intrusive of our privacy. The IRS probably knows more about many of us than our own families do.

The income tax is also totally unnecessary to fund the limited legitimate constitutionally sanctioned activities of the federal government. My first day as senator, I will put a bill in the hopper proposing to repeal the 16th amendment to the constitution, which is the basis of the income tax.

Tax laws are an unavoidable legal quicksand threatening to suck individuals under at any point. Besides just the pure economic drag, there are thousands upon thousands of pages of tax code that no one could reasonably be expected to understand. If the IRS wanted to, they could make some kind of tax case out against nearly anyone.

I propose the elimination of all income taxes. You can't make it any simpler than that. There are other reasons outlined above, but tax simplification alone rates as a pretty good reason. For starters, the fear of an audit, of having your property seized, all that just goes away with no income tax. That emotional relief from IRS oppression alone will be a HUGE public benefit.

Also however, consider the tens of billions of dollars every year to be saved by taxpayers in compliance costs, besides the actual taxes. All the billions of dollars spent on tax lawyers and accountants and H&R Block could be spent on providing for your family. Also, consider the billions of dollars annually to be saved by the federal government in compliance costs.

Finally, simplification by elimination of the tax code will substantially improve the business environment by eliminating the need for lots of otherwise inadvisable moves taken purely on the basis of tax planning.

By rights retirement savings should be the bedrock of the economy, providing the capital for future investments and a secure future for retirees. Instead, under the ironically named "social security" system, 15% of your income is confiscated and squandered. Meager benefits are paid to current retirees, and the rest is simply spent on other things. None of it is saved or invested, and the system will soon no longer be able to continue paying even the current meager benefits. If any private company treated retirement accounts this way, the whole board of directors would be in prison for securities fraud.

The Social Security system must end before retirees can have any real security. There are numerous ways to go about digging out of this mess, including purchasing private annuities for current and near-term recipients, and allowing younger citizens to get out of this corrupt system altogether- putting their money into legitimate retirement investments instead of a government ponzi scheme.

One of the principle reasons cited in the Declaration of Independence for breaking away from the king of England was "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Because of this concern the very first words of the US Constitution say "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Today, the big majority of federal lawmaking is done by unknown, unaccountable, and most of all unelected agency bureaucrats. This leads to most of the worst abusive rules, and to the whole general thicket of unknowable rules. It is also blatantly unconstitutional. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but how can we be expected to know tens of thousands of pages of tax code, besides anything else?

Solution: Constitutionally, only the congress has the power to pass laws. We should insist on sticking to that. As senator I would also insist on asking judicial nominees about this. It will result in far less laws, and far more accountability. If the federal government wants to make literally millions of rules, then at minimum we should expect Congress to actually specifically vote on them.

On one hand, we have enemies in the world who wish us harm, and may in some cases need to be dealt with militarily. I somewhat reluctantly supported the Iraq war, and still think we are basically doing the right thing there - though I might argue with some particulars. We don't want to kill people unnecessarily, but we must deal harshly and unequivocally with people who are trying to kill us - and anybody helping to enable them.

In the big picture, on the other hand, we need to draw back militarily from a whole bunch of places for several reasons. We have troops in well over 100 countries. This tends to make us less rather than more secure, and it wastes boatloads of our money. We need to withdraw our troops from at least two thirds of these places. Why are we subsidizing the defense of France and Germany anyway? The US military is supposed to be for defending the US.

All these troops in all these places act as tripwires for US involvement. You can't have a fistfight in Macedonia without hitting a US Marine. These troop placements often do more harm than good by giving people an excuse to hate US (eg Saudi Arabia). Plus, troops scattered in 100+ countries aren't doing us any good in the couple of countries where we have actual fighting to do.

Find out more about the Libertarian Party of Indiana at www.lpin.org or the national Libertarian Party at www.lp.org.