Surprise, surprise. The overpaid bloviators on Faux "news" think Sen. Rand Paul's flat tax plan, which would lower their taxes, is a great idea. As Media Matters noted this morning, Steve Doocy was literally applauding for it during Paul's appearance on Fox & Friends this Thursday.

I'd say NYM's Jonathan Chait is correct when it comes to Paul's motivations: Desperate-for-Attention Rand Paul Unveils Flat Tax:

Keeping your place at the radical cutting edge of the Republican Party is a challenging task in a world where a “mainstream” candidate like Marco Rubio proposes to eliminate all taxes on investment income. Rand Paul places his bid by unveiling his trademark plan today: a 14.5 percent flat tax.

To design his plan, Paul has assembled an all-star team of the kookiest pseudo-economists in the history of the Republican Party. Steve Moore, Steve Forbes, and Art Laffer all helped dream up the specifications. (Laffer is fresh off advising Sam Brownback on a program of tax cuts in Kansas, which left the state’s budget a smoking ruin and reduced Brownback to tears.) [...]

Paul’s plan would give rich people an enormous tax cut, while keeping in place the home-mortgage deduction, the largest, most regressive, and most economically damaging deduction in the tax code. It’s okay to give rich people an enormous tax cut, he explains, because “the experts at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation” — a hackish right-wing outfit — deem it, in Paul’s words, “an economic steroid injection,” which sounds like an amazing shortcut for growth without any noxious side effects at all.

Here's more on his proposal from The Hill: Rand Paul calls for 14.5 percent flat tax:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants to gut the U.S. tax code and instead install a flat tax, insisting such a plan would “turbocharge” the economy and be more fair for average taxpayers.

Paul, who’s running for president in 2016, would put into place a 14.5 percent rate for individual, business and investment income, and remove all but a couple of the tax breaks currently on the books. The current top rate for individuals and many small businesses is near 40 percent, while the corporate rate tops out at 35 percent.Taxpayers would get to keep deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable deductions under Paul’s plan, and would also not have to pay any payroll taxes. Plus, the gift and estate taxes would be scrapped, and the first $50,000 of a family of four’s income would be exempt from taxes.

All in all, Paul says it adds up to the biggest tax cut in U.S. history — reducing revenues by some $2 trillion over the first decade. The Kentucky Republican, who once proposed a budget that would balance in five years, says that his broader fiscal plan would actually reduce the federal debt, given the amount of spending cuts he proposes.

And he maintains that his tax plan alone would increase the size of the economy by 10 percent over a decade and create 1.4 million jobs, citing analysis by the free market Tax Foundation.

Paul, who laid out his plan in The Wall Street Journal, cast the tax proposal in populist terms, saying that President Obama’s policies had only led to a rise in income inequality.

“Today, the American people see the rot in the system that is degrading our economy day after day and want it to end,” Paul said. “That is exactly what the Fair and Flat Tax will do through a plan that’s the boldest restoration of fairness to American taxpayers in over a century.”