Senator Tom Coburn !!!!!LIED HIS WAY INTO OFFICE!!!!! He made a deal with the Iniquitous Dick Durbin and joined his “Gang of Six”! He violated his pledge to Americans for Tax Reform, by even frequenting the same Senate Lavatory as these evil malefactors. He must be shamed. He will be stopped. And if you agree with any of the blither written above, you are about as useful to the Republican Party as the corrupt and oleaginous Grover Norquist.

Grover Norquist heads up Americans for Tax Reform. This organization purports to stand for a flatter, lower, more transparent tax system. Tom Coburn has signed off on two attempts to lower tax rates, yet simultaneously eliminate popular tax deductions. This should make Grover Norquist go turn handsprings in his back yard. The rates are lower, and with the various niche deductions being eliminated, the system would become a lot easier to figure and harder for the rich and well-connected to game.

This, I believe, is the cause of much of Grover Norquist’s angst over Senator Coburn. A flatter simplified, tax system would bring in more revenue; even at lower tax rates. In Norquist’s mind, greater revenue = higher taxes. In other words, if we hit the Laffer Curve at just the proper inflection point, you could hypothetically lop 5% off the rate and get called a lying-liar by Grover Norquist for hiking taxes.

I’m convinced that Norquist has forgotten two things when he assails Senator Coburn’s political honor. Taxpayer behavior impacts the level of taxation efficiency in an inverse direction to the marginal rates and in direct proportion to tax code complexity. Also, the Republican Party does not yet control the US Senate.

A totally flat tax would be the most efficient revenue mechanism available to a government that taxed income. It would simply describe moneys derived from certain activities such as working, investing, saving or cheating really well at poker as income. The taxpayer would multiply this sum-total income by xx percent and send it in.

If the rate xx was too great, people who already had a lot of cash would bother far less with wasting their time tracking investments or working. Tax-‘Em-To-Deathers forget that every hour worked has an opportunity cost. A flatter tax system would be a lot easier to live with, unless you’ve spent much time and money gaming the current system. Organizations which have bought themselves favors from Barack Obama; to get taxed like GE or Google, will tend to cheer Norquist on against Coburn.

Norquist should be forced to watch the old Schoolhouse Rock editions on how bills become laws in the US Congress. He claims to aggressively favor Paul Ryan’s plan for reducing the national debt. Good for him. It has made it as far as it can go in a complete and utter vacuum. The Ryan Plan was a piece of budgetary legislation set forth in the House of Representatives where it passed.

What Norquist has forgotten is that the Senate is a unique and independent part of a bi-cameral legislature. It is controlled by the opposing political party. The opposing political party is not in favor of cutting any spending at all. They will do so only grudgingly and in return for negotiated favors.

When Norquist says that all Republican Senators that work with Dick Durbin are LIARS!!, he is stating that he would like to see the Senate fail to pass a budget in FY2011. Should the Senate fail to pass a budget, then the Ryan Plan will die on the vine. There needs to be a Senate Budgetary Bill that can be reconciled with the House Budgetary Bill before anything can land on President Barack Obama’s desk for signature.

The Ryan Proposal, for all its strengths and political value, still remains a bill on Capitol Hill until the Senate puts a budget into the hopper for reconciliation. That’s not because Tom Coburn is a LIAR!!! That’s just how the Constitution was written.

Thus, Senator Coburn is not a nefarious traitor for attempting to push out a Senate budget. He wants to start to compromise on something that is between $3Tr and $6Tr less debt-laden than the laughable PresBud that Barack Obama submitted. What Coburn Ok’ed is what the simple, flat tax, which Grover Norquist’s organization claims to advocate on behalf of, looks like. Norquist, not Coburn looks dishonest when he changes the gravamen of his arguments.