That's actually a nice benefit of the CO2 tax. Even though it's applied to domestic goods as well, the cost is a lot more for foreign-made products due to the increased fuel use for transportation. This way, they can tax foreign-made good more heavily while getting around trade agreements that are already in place.
Yes, but do you really think government is going to abolish income taxes?
Well, the main benefit is to make domestic production more cost-effective. Of course the government isn't going to eliminate income taxes, and I don't expect it to ever do that. It wouldn't be a good idea anyway.
Yeah, Bush fucked up, and the legislators let him. Should have used the fact that there was a budget surplus to get a balanced budget amendment passed, and then gotten the budget surplus marked for being used to pay off the national debt.