Raise Everybody's Taxes

The Hedge Tax is designed to raise everybody's taxes when additional revenues are needed.  Coupled with a balanced budget amendment, politicians are forced to go to a broad spectrum of the voters to gain support.  This scheme strikes directly at the heart of special interest groups

The recent procedural vote on cap and trade demonstrates how this can work.  This article summarizes the "pushback" on the cap and trade scheme to raise carbon taxes.  A number of democratic congresspersons quickly realized that this tax would affect everybody and bailed.  It is fun to mete out taxation punishment on the rich, big oil, or fatcat executives.   But when a tax affects a large number of constituents, suddenly the green turns to yellow.