Mitch Perry
The so-called “fair tax” is a concept that’s been around about 15 years. It would replace all federal taxes with a simple consumption tax on all retail sales.
Mike Huckabee spent most of his 34-minutes on the stage at the Disney Resort and Hotel on Tuesday touting the concept, saying it’s the single biggest factor to will allow the U.S. economy to thrive.
A Florida resident — he now lives in Santa Rosa Beach in the Panhandle, he sounded a bit like Rick Scott in boasting how successful Florida has been in recent years. “Eight hundred and three people a day move into the state of Florida,” he said proudly.
During a question-and-answer session with the crowd, radio talk show host Neal Boortz, who has championed the fair tax, asked Huckabee how he would be able to pass it through Congress.
The former Arkansas governor said there are 75 sponsors for the bill in the House, not nearly enough to get it passed. He said he would be a “strong advocate to explain it and articulate it for the American people.”
“I’m not the chemist, just the pharmacist,” he said about his enthusiasm for the fair tax, which he said would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service.
Huckabee said he would support legalizing the importation of drugs from Canada, decrying the fact that a pill costs $2 in Canada and $10 in Florida.
In a question-and-answer exchange with reporters after his appearance, Huckabee remained on the same page with the majority of his GOP presidential candidates when it comes to immigration. He said he favors securing the border as “Step 1,” before doing Step 2, which he didn’t articulate. “I think that’s an achievable goal,” he said.
When asked whether he would seriously compete in Florida against Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, he said it was too early to reveal his campaign tactics. “I have the intentions of competing everywhere, as of right now.”
When asked about campaign finance, he said the campaigns should be “the depositories” of all campaign funds, not super PACs. “Prohibit nothing. Disclose everything,” he said was his philosophy. He called the current system “disingenuous.”
He also repeated the line from his candidacy annoucement in Hope, Ark, that nobody who currently has a job in politics (like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul) should be running for president.
