U.S. TAXPAYERS PARTY

logo-United States Taxpayers

THE U.S. TAXPAYERS PARTY
(Recently renamed as The Constitution Party)

PARTY OVERVIEW

The US Taxpayers party was founded on Labor Day, 1992. Their candidate, Howard Phillips, appeared on the ballot in 21 states for the '92 presidential race, and in 1995 they became the 5th party to be formally recognized by the Federal Election Commission as a national political party. Since the FEC is notorious for blocking the recognition of third parties, this is quite an achievement.

According to their Website, "The U.S. Taxpayers Party stands firmly on the principles of government laid down by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. . . In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence it is time to remove power from that 'faraway' government in Washington, D.C. and return it to the states and local communities."

If you guessed they might be a bit on the conservative side, their site's prominently displayed Pro-life Web Ring banner should confirm it.

OFFICIAL PLATFORM STATEMENT
FROM THE OFFICIAL WEB PAGE

OUR GOAL:
• To restore American Jurisprudence to its Biblical premises.
• To limit the Federal Government to its Constitutional boundaries

OUR PLAN:
• To elect a President who will use his Constitutional veto authority (with the support of one-third plus one of the members of the House or Senate) to terminate all Federal activities which transgress the delegated enumerated functions prescribed in the Constitution.

OUR POLICY:
• To balance the Federal budget immediately
• To eliminate the national debt, strengthen the dollar, and fight inflation by abolishing the unconstitutional Federal Reserve System
• To repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, abolish the Internal Revenue Service, and eliminate the Federal income tax
• To appoint only judges who acknowledge the legal personhood of the unborn child
• To end Federal interference with imposition of the death penalty for capital crimes
• To fully safeguard the Bill of Rights, including rights of property, speech, religion, and the right to keep and bear arms
• To terminate Federal funding for Planned Parenthood, AIDS education, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Legal Services Corporation, and other subsidized forms of ideological advocacy
• To close down the U.S. Department of Education and restore local and parental authority by terminating the Federal role in education
• To restore unconstitutional Federal holdings to the states and the people
• To restore accountability by abolishing congressional pensions, limiting judicial authority, ending bureaucratic privilege, overturning executive orders, and restoring all legitimate regulatory power to elected officials.
• To withdraw from all New World Order treaties and organizations
• To provide for the common defense, including the immediate deployment of a strategic defense and the retention of strategically crucial U.S. bases at the isthmus of Panama.

THE DARKHORSE2000 FISHY-EYED ASSESSMENT

Eliminating the Federal income tax sounds like a Good Thing in our book, but that part about restoring American jurisprudence to its Biblical premises gives us the willies. We seem to recall something about a tradition that goes back to the foundation of America - something about the separation of church and state. We also get a little nervous when politicians start talking about the New World Order, and we get downright cranky when they want to eliminate funding for AIDS education and the National Endowment for the Arts. Other than than that momentary outburst of partisanship, we continue to maintain our objective, non-partisan stance.

The US Taxpayers party has made impressive gains in the eight years of their existance, but their right-wing, right-to-life stance is a little too extreme to gain significant mainstream support.

For awhile there, they had us wondering: If they succeeded in eliminating the income tax, would they have to change their name? It must have occurred to some of the Taxpayer's party folks, because on September 3, 1999, they changed their name to the Constitution Party.

- RA