One of the centerpieces of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) constitutional vision is repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, and replacing our current tax system with a national sales tax. As ThinkProgress explained earlier today, one of the consequences of this proposal is that millions of American seniors would be taxed again on their savings, despite the fact that they already paid taxes on that money when they earned it as income.

As Greg Sargent reports, however, the Perry campaign is now acknowledging that eliminating the federal government’s most effective way to fund Social Security, Medicare and the military may not be something they can do right away:

The 16th Amendment instituting a federal income tax starting at one percent has exploded into onerous, complex and confusing tax rates and rules for American workers over the last century. The need for job creation in the wake of the explosion of federal debt and costly entitlement programs, mean the best course of action in the near future is a simpler, flatter and broader tax system that unleashes production, creates jobs, and creates more taxpayers. We can’t undo more than 70 years of progressive taxation and worsening debt obligations overnight.

Sargent reads Perry’s statement as “declining to reaffirm his support for repeal of the 16th Amendment or for the so-called ‘Fair Tax’ or the national sales tax,” and suggest that his campaign is now “distancing” itself from Perry’s original plan to simply repeal the amendment and let America’s seniors figure out how to survive with only part of their savings. But it is not at all clear that’s what the Perry campaign is saying here.

The campaign acknowledges — correctly — that a President Perry could not eliminate the backbone of America’s revenue stream “overnight,” but it also never disavows Perry’s original statement that his long term goal remains the same. The campaign was much less circumspect in disavowing Perry’s belief that Social Security violates the Constitution. According to the Wall Street Journal Perry’s campaign said that his previous position on Social Security “is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.”

One thing is very clear, however, the Perry campaign has no illusions about how damaging Perry’s constitutional vision is for his candidacy, and they have no interest in making Perry’s recently-published tenther manifesto the focus of his messaging. They have yet to do anything, however, to rebut the obvious conclusion that Perry still believes everything he wrote just nine months ago.

A study led by a team of UNC-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt professors examining what “cultural dispositions” unite the Tea Party reaching some interesting conclusions about the political movement’s relationship with the Constitution. They simultaneously revere the idea of the Constitution and hate much of what it actually says:

In our follow-up poll, 84% of those positive towards the TPM [Tea Party members] said the Constitution should be interpreted “as the Founders intended,” compared to only 34% of other respondents. Other respondents were also three times more likely not to have an opinion on the issue, highlighting the salience of the question for TPM supporters. Support for Constitutional principles is not absolute. TPM supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . . The Constitution – and Tea Party more generally – take on heightened symbolic value and come to represent a ‘way of life’ or a “world view” rather than a specific set of laws or policy positions.

Sadly, the study actually paints a much more reasonable picture of the Tea Party than the reality suggests. Amending the Constitution to literally write your own policy preferences into the document is very rarely a good idea, but it is also an entirely legitimate way of bringing about constitutional change. The Tea Party, however, seems more interested in simply asserting repeatedly and loudly that the Constitution already imposes their preferred policy outcomes on the country — and in ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

In the past two years, we’ve seen Tea Party elected officials claim that everything from Social Security, to Medicare, to Pell Grants and federal student loans, to federal disaster relief, to the minimum wage, to child labor laws, to the ban on whites-only lunch counters all violate the Constitution. In other words, it’s clear that the Tea Party has little interest in following the actual Constitution — they just think the rest of the nation is gullible enough to believe that it says whatever the Tea Party wants it to say.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is taking a lot of well-deserved criticism for his absurd claims that Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. But these are hardly the only part of Perry’s constitutional agenda, which seem designed to inflict unnecessary cruelty on America’s seniors. Perry also wants to repeal the federal government’s 16th Amendment authority to enact income taxes and replace it with a tax system that would slash millions of Americans life savings:

Perry declares that the 16th Amendment represents “the great milestone on the road to serfdom” because it represented “the birth of wealth redistribution in the United States.”

Perry clearly states that “we should restrict the unlimited source of revenue that the federal government has used to grow beyond its constitutionally prescribed powers.” How? Here’s what Perry suggests, in addition to scrapping the current tax code:

Another option would be to repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution (providing the power for the income tax) altogether, and then pursue an alternative model of taxation such as a national sales tax or the Fair Tax.

There are countless problems with Perry’s national sales tax proposal (“Fair Tax” is just a more Orwellian term for the national sales tax), but one of the biggest problems is its impact on seniors or anyone else with significant life savings. Perry’s plan would require millions of Americans to be taxed twice on much of the money they have saved for retirement.

Imagine that you earn $10,000, and are required to pay 25 percent income tax on those earnings. That means that you are left with $7,500 that you are free to spend or save however you choose. If Perry gets his way, however, Congress will suddenly enact a massive new sales tax after you have already paid income taxes on your earnings. The result is that every single one of your $7,500 will be taxed again when you make a purchase — causing nearly one in three dollars in your savings to be eaten up by sales taxes. Thanks to Rick Perry, you are left with only about $5,000 of your original $10,000 in income.

Admittedly, there are ways to temporarily shield retirement savings from taxation, but few if any Americans will be able to shield their entire savings and still be able to maintain the flexibility they need to live their lives. As a result, Rick Perry’s double tax will eviscerate the savings that millions of American seniors depend upon. Add to this the fact that Perry also believes that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, and it is unclear how he expects any but the wealthiest seniors to pay their medical bills and continue to put food on their tables.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) originally promised that he would use his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee to focus on jobs. But the Texas conservative is so up in arms about the Obama administration’s recent decision not to automatically deport nonviolent undocumented immigrants that he is now committed to holding hearings on the subject.

Smith recently admitted to right-wing radio host Joe Pagliarulo that his goal in holding these hearings is nothing more than to “embarrass the president.” His nakedly partisan purpose has less to do with policy than trying to make the administration look bad “to get the American people on our side”:

SMITH: We can conduct hearings, oversight hearings, we can pull in administration officials, make them testify under oath, find out what’s going on, try to, frankly, embarrass the President and push back and get the American people on our side to push back against the administration. Secondly, the Appropriations Committee can defund any of these efforts, but unfortunately, on the appropriations level, you can only defund it one year at a time, so that’s not a long-term solution.

Listen here:

Smith then told Pagliarulo that the only long-term solution to ensure harsher treatment of undocumented immigrants is to elect a new president in 2012.

(HT: Political Correction)