Attacking the Tax Code

John McCain has aroused my ire on a number of occasions over the past few years. The infamous McCain-Feingold attack on the First Amendment, the Gang of Fourteen agreement and his off and on flirtation with the Democrats to the detriment of his own party have all contributed to my distrust of him as a reliable conservative. However, McCain does have the intestinal fortitude to also stand up and be counted in the war and he does have some conservative mojo.

This mojo was proved today, as he takes on the antiquated and overblown US tax code. McCain plans to call the tax code "Byzantine" and "incomprehensible", both of which are demonstrably true. In his comments, McCain will say,

"It won't be easy to fix a Byzantine code that has been decades in the making. But I don't want the office for the sake of the nice house, the big plane, and the car and driver," Mr. McCain plans to say, according to an excerpt of his remarks provided to The New York Sun. "I want to fix the hardest problems, and I'll fight to make the tax code simpler, fairer, flatter, more pro-growth and pro-jobs."

If McCain is serious, this could get interesting. He also plans to support, according to the New York Sun, a line item veto for the President, entitlement reform and balancing the budget. All of these are worthy items, but the tax code is probably the biggest issue facing us outside of the social security and Medicare behemoths. If we can actually reform it so that we don't nheed the legions of tax specialists, that would be a huge step in the right direction. Personally, I would like to see a flat tax, but I am not sure if that has enough support to pass. In any event, good for John McCain. I have only one question- why did he wait this long? There was a Republican Congress and a Republican President for most of the past eight years. Why wait until there is a Democratic Congress to push for reforms that Democrats traditionally are not in favor of?