By Ryan Spoon
A professional lobbyist in Idaho told me that we can achieve anything “if we just have courage” and “stand by our principles.” Well, I’m gonna try out her advice… Here goes nothing… Are you ready? …
I OPPOSE GROCERY TAX REPEAL.
Hmm, that didn’t feel like it took a lot of courage, but there, I said it. I used to support repealing the grocery tax… Until I didn’t. I used to support repealing it, mostly because other conservatives that I respected told me that I was supposed to hold that position. I hadn’t really thought through the issue, but I decided to just stick with my team until I figured it out. Why not, I mean, all taxes are bad, right?
But then I thought about the issue a lot more and started listening to both sides. No, I don’t really buy the arguments about taxing people from out of state or taxing illegals or the other gaming-the-system arguments that are out there, although I won’t go so far as to say that those arguments are completely without merit. What I do believe in is absolute SIMPLICITY in our tax code. I don’t like carve outs, exemptions, credits, special privileged categories, or political favors for preferred groups. Keep our taxes as SIMPLE as possible, squish them down as LOW as possible, cut more spending, and then squish the taxes down again.
First and foremost, it comes down to the freedom of personal choices. I don’t like it when government tries to use social engineering on me via the tax code, and I don’t want them to do it to other people either. Why should I be making choices for other families about where they prioritize their spending? For example, I live in a suburban neighborhood, and I work from home, and we do all of our grocery shopping at the grocery store, with the one exception that we try to buy our beef from a friend that raises their own beef. But if someone else wants to live on 40 acres out in the sticks and raise all their own food down to the last morsel, and the trade-off is that they have a large gas bill to drive a long ways to work each day, shouldn’t that be their choice, not mine? Or what if someone gets a job that provides a lot of their meals, and they choose to spend more money on clothing or transportation or other expenses instead? Shouldn’t that be their choice? Why should I have a say in which part of their spending gets taxed more? And what about the personal choice of frugality? Repealing the grocery tax delivers a far greater reward to the people dining daily on lobster and wagyu beef and Perrier water than it does to the large family scraping by on rice, beans, and cheap food staples. Again, we are inserting government into the most basic personal financial decisions whenever we create an exemption.
I also don’t like the government deciding what constitutes “food.” RFK Jr’s confirmation yesterday notwithstanding, you just know that our government is still stupid enough to claim that Doritos and energy drinks are “food” but raw milk and insect-free, mRNA-free meats are not “food.” If decisions like that can be screwed up, we all know that our government will screw them up.
This doesn’t mean that I want to raise taxes or protect taxes or whatever else someone is going to claim about my position. I want to LOWER ALL sales taxes and ALL other taxes across the board, but I want to do it without carving out special categories. Because it starts with something like groceries, and then we move on to medication, and then diapers, and then kids’ clothes. What, are you really going to tax children’s clothing?! What kind of sick monster are you, anyways?! Villain! RINO! Do you see how the exemptions never end?
Let’s keep our taxes as SIMPLE as possible and as LOW as possible.
Allegedly, I’m now officially a RINO sellout or something. Does my new status come with some sort of compensation? Where do I collect that? Is there a form or something?
Anyways, some “food” for thought…
About Ryan Spoon
Ryan Spoon graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1998 and served as an active-duty Army officer. He now works in fire protection engineering consulting. He is the former Chairman of the Idaho Freedom Political Action Committee (PAC) and the current First Vice Chairman of the Ada County Republican Party Central Committee (Ada County GOP).
