I'm no Econo-thingie-guy, but this one's pretty easy. Whenever Dennis Hastert suggests anything, you can be sure it's a great idea for the rich and a terrible idea for everyone else. These days he's proposing eliminating the I.R.S..
I'll leave you in the capable hands of Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias to explain why this is such a stupid idea, not to mention unrealistic and practically impossible to implement.
In short, it's ridiculous and obviously just a ploy to appeal to people's "Hey! That means no taxes!" ignorance.
Quick lesson to those folks: if we change our tax system, but don't drastically reduce spending (that means roads, schools, social security, medicare, veteran's benefits, etc.), the money still has to come from somewhere. It will come from you and me, one way or another. Reigning in runaway government spending is a separate issue, one that won't be resolved by changing the tax code. Starving the beast doesn't work. Hungry beasts are really mean and unpredictable.
