Word: long
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this proposal come from two ordinary legislators, there'd be nothing to worry about. But Long and Ullman control the most important committees in Congress. If they succeed in pushing their VAT through Congress, Americans will pay a regressive "hidden sales tax" which forces lower and middle income people to contribute far more than their share to a government dominated by the interests of Big Business...
...RUSSELL LONG usually barges into Senate hearings as if he were entering a red-neek Southern bar. Last year, he swung open the doors to a House-Senate conference drawling, "I hope it won't give anyone a brain hemmorage to hear a new idea." Well Long has just come up with a new one that's bound to give Americans more than a nose bleed. He has gotten together with Al Ullman--the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--to propose a value added tax (VAT) which could drastically change the American tax system...
Like Louis XIV at Versailles, Long wields total power in the United States Senate. For over two decades, this Democrat of the Bourbon South has controlled the Senate Finance Committee like his own fiefdom. He thus personally approves every piece of legislation which touches what Harry Truman called, "the most sensitive nerve in the human body--the pocketbook nerve." Without a doubt, Long's VAT proposal will pinch the money nerves of all Americans...
...POLITICIANS, the VAT has one fabulous advantage over a sales tax. It's hidden. Though Long and Ullman both admit that its costs will be passed onto consumers, the VAT will not look like a surcharge on sales. Instead it will be incorporated in the list prices of all goods. Consequently, most consumers who spend $50 on a case of wine will have no idea that their purchase is really worth only $45 but that the government tax has upped production and distribution costs...
...Senator Long has devised a method to furtively reach into the pockets of American consumers. The wily Southerner has thus found a solution to Edmund Burke's perennial problem: "To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to man." Long seems to reply to Burke by suggesting that if politicians disguise their taxes, they can please the public, take its money and still get re-elected. With unfounded audacity, Senator Long claims that the VAT is the "least painful way of collecting money," over-looking the regressive nature of this tax. Long...