Earl “Buddy” Carter is a pharmacist representing a gerrymandered south Georgia congressional district, based on— and disenfranchising— Savannah. When he was in the state Senate he authored a bill to increase reimbursement rates for pharmacies, which resulted in increased profits for the 3 pharmacies he owned.
His district, GA-01, has been drawn to elect knee-jerk Republicans like Carter, who is a very far right extremist. They added rural red hellholes in Glynn, Effingham, Camden, Ware, Pierce, Appling, Brantley, McIntosh, Long, Bacon, Charlton and Bryan counties to dilute the big blue vote in Savannah (Chatham County) and in Liberty County. In the 2022 presidential election, Trump only managed to get 39.9% of the vote in Chatham County (and an even smaller share in Liberty) but backward rural counties like Brantley (90.2%), Bacon (86.1%) and Pierce (87.3%) more than made up for it. Last November Carter, despite being on of the worst members of Congress, was reelected with 59.1% of the vote, even after losing Savannah, where he is widely detested, in a landslide. The PVI of the district is R+9.
A member of the Budget Committee, Carter just introduced a bill with an Orwellian name— the Fair Tax Act, which is unfair and classically reactionary. It would put a sales tax on everything every American buys (including food and services). Carter has always been in favor of shifting the tax burden from the very wealthy to the working and middle class. He has never seen a tax cut for the rich he didn’t love and just voted to claw back IRS money meant to audit the super-rich.
Erica Payne, president of the Patriotic Millionaires lays the blame not just at Buddy Carter’s feet but at the feet of the whole Republican Conference. “Out of all the issues we’re facing as a country,” she wrote, “House Republicans have decided eliminating taxes for their wealthy donors is their priority. Their anti-tax bills getting introduced, receiving hearings, and being voted on are all part of the numerous concessions Rep. Kevin McCarthy worked out with the far-right wing of his party in order to accumulate enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House. The most extreme House Republicans are now running the show, and the (Couldn’t be Less) Fair Tax Act is the result. By eliminating all personal and corporate income taxes, gift taxes, and the payroll tax, the Fair Tax Act would completely overhaul how our current tax system works, and in the process give enormous tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy. But that’s not all— its new 30 percent national sales tax would leave poor and middle-class Americans paying significantly more for virtually every purchase you make.”
No income taxes for anyone may sound like a great idea, but income taxes are significantly more progressive than sales taxes, meaning they hit wealthy Americans much harder than the poor and middle-class. Sales taxes, on the other hand, disproportionately impact those with less to spare.
If you’re a billionaire you’re probably not able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on goods and services— so you’d be paying significantly less in taxes than you should be paying right now. Someone earning a middle-class salary or living paycheck to paycheck, on the other hand, is going to spend almost every single dollar they earn as soon as it comes in, and pay sales tax on each and every dollar they spend.
Unless you’re a millionaire or billionaire, you’re almost definitely better off paying a national sales tax than an income tax. That’s why the Fair Tax Act is a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires, and a tax increase on working Americans. It’s as simple as that.
Buddy Carter isn't the only deranged Georgia Republican out to harm working families. Today another Georgia imbecile representing a backward rural district, Rick Allen, explained why the Republican Party is out to cut Social Security benefits by raising the age of retirement. He told a press person that people come up to him and say "they actually want to work longer... Well, you know, if people want to work longer, maybe we need to give 'em an incentive to do it. That's the way to solve every one of these problems by the way and actually grow wealth at the same time." Pointing to his head, he ended by saying, "It just takes that right there." His district is just north of Carter's-- and the reddest in the state with a PVI of R+22. Although he lost the city of Augusta by a landslide, the rest of the district is red and rural and he was reelected 59.6% to 40.4%.
