Tax cuts and Democrats

According to an article in the San Diego Union tribune, the Democrats are looking for a way to “pay” for middle class tax cuts. That’s the same kind of wordsmithing that allowed Bill Clinton to raise our taxes after campaigning on a middleclass tax cut in 1992. I remember the “targeted tax cuts” of the Clinton years – the targets were few and far between.

They aren’t “paying” for tax cuts – the only people paying here are the taxpayers. It’s the taxpayers’ money, not government’s money – hence the name “taxpayers”. The fact that Democrats demand that taxpayers “pay” for their taxcuts implies that we are buying something we don’t necessarily deserve. And who, exactly, are we paying? The government? For what? For bloated Federal programs that cost more than their private equivalent would cost? The Democrats are being disingenuous by using the phraseology of the fiscally responsible to cover up the fact that they don’t want to cut any of their spending programs and it’s all in preparation for tax increases.

Remember the famous Clinton line about he had worked harder than he ever had in his life to find us a middleclass tax cut, but couldn’t find any – so he raised our taxes instead?

Remember how Bill Clinton balanced his spending (he never balanced the budget, contrary to popular urban legends – there was still a deficit when he left office)? By downsizing the military and cutting defense spending – one of the only functions of government clearly mentioned in the Constitution that we don’t need a judge to “interpret” for us. Well, the Party of Cut-and-Run are contemplating the same;

Bush’s spending decisions also came under fire from the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.

“How can you ever expect to get to a balanced budget if you’re spending $100 billion a year on Iraq borrowing the money to do it, if you’re giving $50 billion a year in tax cuts to people who make over a million bucks a year and paying for that with borrowed money?” Obey said.

At least some Republicans still have a backbone;

The Senate’s top Republican said most GOP senators oppose this budget rule because “it almost guarantees that the majority, if it enacts it, will try to raise taxes.”

“The last thing we need to do is to be raising taxes in this country, and ‘pay-go’ is the first step toward raising taxes,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I think there will be very few, if any, Republicans who will support raising taxes.

But according to Robert Novak, not all of the Republicans are quite so stiff-spined – including the President.

Curt at Flopping Aces compares the Democrats on the Sunday shows to the RNC-rejected Zucker ads.

Category: Politics