Like the Outlandish Lies of Santos, McCarthy’s Outlandish Promises Keep Surfacing

I thought I had heard about all the wacky-ass shit McCarthy promised to the nutbag caucus, but I hand’t heard about the 30% national sales tax.  

As part of his deal to become House speaker, Kevin McCarthy reportedly promised his party’s conservative hardliners a vote on legislation that would scrap the entire American tax code and replace it with a jumbo-sized national sales tax.

The assurance got relatively little attention at the time, drowned out by the many other concessions McCarthy made to win his gavel. But with Democrats already attacking the proposal, some conservatives see it as a political headache in the making.

The idea of a “fair tax” that would replace our current IRS code with a single sales tax was popularized on conservative talk radio in the late 1990s. It has kicked around Washington ever since, popping up in the occasional presidential platform, but never received a vote.

• Via Slate