Happy April 15th! -- or maybe not. It's "Tax Day," and there's a good chance that you're rushing to complete your return and get it in the mail by midnight. On no other day of the year do Americans feel the cost of government quite so painfully.

If you're "the average Missourian," nearly one third of your working life was spent paying the cost of government this year. You worked until April 14th earning the money to pay the costs of government (local, state and federal) -- and that's not including "hidden" taxes imposed by inflation, government debt and excess regulation. You worked all of January and a day extra to pay your federal income taxes, and then all of February to cover Social Security and Medicaid.

There's a better way.

As your congressman, I'll work to drastically reduce your tax burden. I'll support legislation to eliminate the income tax, and until such legislation gains enough support to pass into law, I'll work for two specific proposals that give everyone real tax cuts.

• I'll support a large, regular, annual increase in the "personal exemption" to the federal income tax. Every year, every American will be able to make more money before paying any tax at all. Every year, more Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder will be able to keep their entire incomes.
  
  
• I'll support a "FICA floor" equal to the the income tax's "personal exemption" amount. The first dollars you earn every year, up to that "floor," will be exempt from perniciously regressive Social Security and Medicaid "premiums."
  

Republican "supply side" advocates like Congressman Todd Akin claim to support tax cuts, but somehow those tax cuts always seem to be aimed at lining the pockets of an enlightened elite, from which the benefits are supposed to "trickle down" to the rest of us.

In fact, a bottom-up tax cut would generate no less "economic stimulus" than a top rate or capital gains cut. That money would still go back into the economy -- and its dispersal across more wallets would provide better economic information to producers in the form of consumer demand. "Conservatives" love to grumble about "central planning" in government, but for some reason they think that corporate boards are a better judge of what consumers want than consumers themselves.

If you're serious about tax cuts -- real tax cuts, for everyone -- vote Libertarian in November.