How Many FairTax Bills Introduced?
February 3, 2008 · Filed under: Mailbag
From reader Margrette:
I am a senior in high school and I am doing a government project on an issue that interests me and after years of listening to Neal Boortz, I jumped at the chance to introduce the Fair Tax to my extremely liberal government class. Part of the project includes determining how many bills have been introduced regarding the Fair Tax. I can’t find this information explicitly stated online. Can you help me?? I’d really appreciate it.
Anybody know the answer to her question?
No Responses to “How Many FairTax Bills Introduced?”
Margrette,
I’m not sure why it matters, but the Fairtax legislation was first introduced in July of 1999, and has been introduced in every new Congress since. That’s five times the bill was introduced in the House, and there is companion legislation in the Senate. I guess you could say there have been 10 Fairtax bills introduced? But, who’s counting?
The FairTax bill itself has been submitted to the Congress each year since 1999 (according to wikipedia). So thus far it’s been submitted 9 times (1999-2007).
Some states have considered similar legislation, but I don’t have any information on these.
James,
I think you will find that the bill has been submitted in the first session of each of the last five Congresses. There is no need to submit bills twice in the same Congress which lasts two years. It has therefore been submitted five times, referred to the W&M Committee each time, and no action taken.
I think it was only submitted for each congress, which is every 2 years. It was first submitted in the 106th congress and this is the 110th, so 5 times. It was H.R. 2525 in the 106th and 107th and from the 108th on it was H.R. 25.
Hank (and others)
Thanks for pointing that out. Completely slipped my mind that congress is a two-year deal.
There was the Tauzin-shaffer bill in the mid 90′s that came before the FairTax. It was a national retail sales tax and had some similarities to the FairTax. It had exemptions and no prebate. It dd not have near the economist research as the Fairtax does.