Why are you liberals so opposed to tax cuts?

Great Debates
121

Yes, they will spend the money available and then some more. When Congress and the White House reach a budget deal each year, they view a balanced budget as nice, but not as important as advancing the interests of the groups that supported (read: paid) them.

The same process gets repeated every year. The Democrats and Republicans both present a list of the programs that they want funding for, and then they “compromise”, which in practice means that both parties get most of the money that they originally asked for. Each individual member of Congress is beholden to their own campaign contributors, and most contributors are demanding an increase in spending.

Now suppose that Joe Democrat and Bob Repbulican are negotiating. Joe promised his contributors that he would arrange for the government to fund program A, and Bob promised his contributors that he would get funding for program B. So how will they compromise? They could compromise either by funding both programs, or by funding neither. But they will usually choose to fund both in order to please their contributors. In other words, it is more important to Joe that he gets the funding for A than that he kills the funding for B, and the same is true for Bob. So during major budget decisions, Congress isn’t going to reduce spending just because the government’s revenue has been reduced.

Watch the next budget battle that developes. Even though we’re already going to dip into our Social Security and Medicare trust funds for money, I guarantee you that spending will increase.

Here’s some reading: http://www.reason.com/ml/ml041201.html

122

I don’t see why balancing the budget and paying off the debt, while giving taxes cuts is so hard. You want a fair system? Across the board spending cuts to absolutely every government program (except those related to paying down the debt). It is totally fair and would create great revenue.

123

So we should hold off increasing the pay and benefits of military personnel (at a time when the lack of pay/benefits is threatening to create a serious drain on our forces as people leave for more lucrative civilian work) so that we can cut back on defense spending at the same rate as we cut back on Congressional perks? We should reduce spending for the Center for Disease Control as we face increasingly virulent and antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

Despite what it is popular to believe, there are programs that genuinely need increased funding to face new issues or even to simply deal with our (low, but not non-existent) inflation. The problem, of course, is that we all get to disagree which programs must have funding increases.

Have you ever been through an across-the-board cut in industry? It inevitably penalizes those departments that have worked the hardest to control costs and are already running on the edge, while allowing those departments with extra padding and “fat” to survive comfortably. Using an across-the-board cut on one occasion teaches good managers that they need to build more fat into the system to survive the next across-the-board cut.

Lord Acton: “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution,
and it is wrong.”

124

I’ve noticed that on most pages like this when I feel that I have given raised an intelligent point, someone out there feels the need to pick apart my argument and argue something relatively insignifigant rather than actually (God forbid) think about what I have said.

First let me say that no, I do not get paid if you visit the site I have posted. I simply use it to make my point which is that there is terrible, terrible waste in the federal government in both the Republican and Democratic sides. Now, it has been shown that if taxes are cut, the defict increases because spending either stays the same or goes up. If taxes go up, spending goes up too because a lot of politicians go, “Oh look! More free money!”

That is why I suggest that the current tax rate should be frozen, and whoever is really in charge (be it Bush, Cheney, Powell or Congress) should start to make some serious spending cuts.

Like I’ve said before, if you have a lot of credit card debt, you can’t really just go up to your boss and say, “Give me a raise. Then when I’ve paid off my debt, I’ll let you lower my pay again.” (BTW, if you do have a job like that, where can I send my resume?) It’s exactly the same way. The government is supposed to work for us. They are supposed to get our permission for any “pay raise” or increase in taxes they give themselves. Otherwise, this is not a democracy. It is a failure.

125

Perhaps you can inform us when the last national referendum in America took place. Or the last time Congress, acting as some great megalithic entity, asked The People, another megalithic entity, anything at all.

Members of Congress have already received our permission by getting elected in the first place. Although it would be nice if every so often they returned to their home districts (notice the offstage gasp) and asked what their constituents desire.

But they are supposed to be leaders, not vote canvassers. Well, except perhaps for Tom DeLay. At any rate, it is the obligation of the constituent to make his wishes known and not wait to be consulted. When people expect to be spoon-fed by elected representatives, then perhaps democracy has failed. What you can do for your country. Not what your country can do for you.

126

Thank you for proving my point and ignoring the rest of my point. Once again, I will repeat myself since it is obvious that it is being ignored.

Raising taxes has not helped. This is because if you give Congress more “free money” they will spend it. Tax cuts are a good idea, but they don’t help if they are not accompanied by a freeze on spending. I suggest that taxes should be cut along with some spending cuts. Not across the board, as that would cut important programs. But I’m sure that anyone who has ever balanced a checkbook could take a look at the federal budget and find many programs that are simply a waste of money. Cut them. Slash them. Trim the fat. Then look at what we have. More money. Put it toward the defict. Once our country is out of debt, politicians will have no reason to continue to raise taxes. Then, our economy will prosper.

I agree that Congress should be leaders. They should do as they were elected. That is to represent the people of their districts. If you can find anyone who has voted for a person because they said they were going to raise taxes, send me your address and I’ll mail you $20.

127

I chose not to discuss your naive and grossly-oversimplified fix-its because they have already been dealt with summarily by other posters. You do not have a divine right to receive a point-by-point analysis of whatever banal tripe you choose to submit.

<yawn>

Yes, this is the rub, isn’t it? There are plenty of programs I would love to cut. The White House Office of Faith-Based Services. Every dime of federal money that supports so-called abstinence education. Most of the White House Press Corps and the President’s staff of useless interference-runners. Transportation money that pours into West Virginia to build monorails for towns with 25,000 people. A $40 million propagandistic mailing that erroneously informs people how much they will be receiving from the IRS. Billions of dollars wasted on corporate contracts.

The list goes on and on.

So if you are willing to let me be the arbiter of what programs receive funding and what programs are cut, well, I guess I would jump right on to your bandwagon, Lord Ashtar.

Perhaps the prosperity of the last eight years, while our country has been in debt and while taxes were high, has eluded you.

I would. If a politician were truly conservative, he would raise taxes in a time of prosperity both to control excessive growth and to prepare for the inevitable downturn. If he were honest about his intentions, I would vote for him without hesitation. I want someone to manage this country they way I would manage my own money.

Ideally speaking, of course.

128

Perhaps, then, Lord Ashtar, you should take note that that is how things are done on message boards like this, and draft your posts accordingly.

BTW, it is your opinion that you have made an “intelligent point”. Quite obviously, it is not the opinion of those who disagree with you. I have read what you have written, and tend to agree with the opposition.

Sua

129

Actually the SS and Medicare Trust Funds have always been fully spent by the federal government. There are no invested assets left to “dip into.”

However, if we follow Bush’s program and allow a portion of the trust funds to be represented by actual invested assets, then the government may have to replace that amount of money with additional taxation, spending reductions, or borrowing.

130

You haven’t run into Kimstu yet, have you? There is someone who’d vote for tax increases, albeit rational, reasonable, and well-thought out tax increases in her mind. :smiley: If she agrees you owe me twenty smackers.

Well, I’m very cynical when it comes to how our Government spends and wastes, maybe moreso than you. I’m entirely in favor of across the board reducing of spend, but the Government is to wishy-washy to ever really reduce its budget significantly. Once funds are allocated, it is hard to stop, difficult to slash. Our current political and political party machines can’t be trusted to do that—they’ll raise again or borrow first.

131

I have voted for people who want to raise taxes…

Lord Ashtar, you owe Maeglin $20.

Spend it well…

132

P.S. Maeglin, let me know if you collect.

133

No program needs a spending increase. If the government cannot afford a program then the private sector can pick it up. As far as I am concerned, over 90% of all government programs should be privatized.

134

Ex-Tank: You are way too sane for GD. Somebody needs to feed you some Mexican fat burners. (Wildest Bill, are you listening?)

Fernand Braudel, in one of his books on world history (great books, I highly recommend them.) said that his research tended to show that a country got into really big trouble at the point where its total debt, public and private, hit three times GDP. I figure if you threw every form of debt in from every entity around, as a WAG you’d probably come up with one and a half times GDP. But that’s a WAG. I do believe it’s well to the south of three times, though.
My fellow liberals, we can play a very Machiavellian game here. The tax cut has already been passed. Bush & Co. are dying for their missile shield. (an example of military spending gone to bloat if ever there was one.) Should they get it (if they haven’t already; anyone out there know?) then you can pretty much guarantee they’ll break the debt limit.
The debt limit stands at 5.95 trillion. Total debt sits at around 5.7 trillion on any given day. The economic slowdown is already causing tax receipts to slow down. If Bush succeeds in combining the tax cut with an increase in military spending, he’ll have to ask Congress to raise the debt limit.
At which time it will be time to give him some well-deserved hell.
The debt may not be a real economic problem, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn it into a real political problem.

135

(1) The bracket creep issue has come up in discussions before, e.g., regarding the tax cuts of the Reagan era and while it did apparently exist back then, it hasn’t existed for quite some time because the brackets now move up with the cost-of-living index (or a similar measure). Check the rates schedule in your 1040 instruction books over the past few years if you don’t believe me. I think that federal revenue as a percentage of the GDP has been rising steadily more because there are people, particularly near the upper end of the scale, who have been doing very well lately and are paying more taxes (especially with all the capital gains from the [once-]rising stock market).

(2) While receipts as a percentage of GDP have gone up since 1992, outlays as a percentage of GDP have been dropping and are at low levels not seen since the 1960s. [Source: federal budget FY2002 historical tables.] Why the discrepency between outlays and receipts? Quite simply because we have gone from deficits to surplusses! I.e., our receipts are high now because the economy is good and we can thus afford to pay off what we put onto the “credit card” in the past. However, our current spending (including servicing the debt!), far from being out-of-control, is actually dropping as a percentage of GDP.

Well, I’m another find for Maeglin. In fact, I goes as far as to say that if any politician tells me they are going to cut my taxes, that is quite a black mark in my book, because I don’t think people in myself (and others in similar financial situation) need our taxes cut. There are more pressing needs to be addressed. And while I was not a huge Al Gore fan [having voted for Nader myself], I took it as a positive evidence of the relative fairness of his tax plan to that of Bush that his tax cuts would not have given me anything whereas the Bush tax cuts are supposed to give me close to $1500/year (once fully implemented).

136

http://slate.msn.com/Economics/01-07-30/Economics.asp

Basically says that the notion of the tax rebate as good for the economy is hocum. Can anyone point out the problem in the argument?

tj

137

Ashtar, the problem with your posts so far is that you seem to be ignoring the realities of politics in Washington. Your idea is that Bush and Congress should cut taxes and trim wasteful spending, and then everything will work out just fine. Now this would be a great plan, provided that all of our politicians had only the best interests of the people in mind. But they don’t. Politicians are controlled by their donors. Since there isn’t going to be meaningful campaign finance reform in the near future, we need to make budget decisions based on political realities.

You’ve said several times there is a lot of wasteful government spending. Nobody is disputing that. The purpose of my last post was to show that we can’t just snap our fingers and make it go away.

I’ll leave the merits of Bush’s plan for another thread. Now consider the three options that you listed. Don’t you agree that in such a situation, Congress would probably choose to just borrow money and go deeper into debt, rather than raising taxes or making any serious effort to reduce spending.

138

Now the treasury is going to borrow $51 billion in order to pay for the tax rebate.
Here’s the gist:
“Instead of paying down $57 billion in debt, as the Treasury had expected on April 30, the Treasury now plans to borrow $51 billion.”
Cutting fat from bloated programs is a fine idea, but running up the national debt to reward taxpayers for efficiencies the administration has not yet implemented seems a bit shaky.

139

Most economists (the ones that that I trust) would agree that simply giving people money to “prime the pump” is NOT an effective wy to stimulate the economy. However, reducing marginal tax rates is a very good way to stimulate the economy.

Bush’s orginal proposal had more reductions in marginal rates than the version passed by Congress. However, even the actual tax reduction will reduce marginal tax rates in future years, if it’s not overridden by further legislation.

140

Pyrrhonist replied to LA: *“If you can find anyone who has voted for a person because they said they were going to raise taxes, send me your address and I’ll mail you $20.”

You haven’t run into Kimstu yet, have you? There is someone who’d vote for tax increases, albeit rational, reasonable, and well-thought out tax increases in her mind. If she agrees you owe me twenty smackers. *

You owe Pyrrhonist twenty smackers, Lord Ashtar. I was too young to vote for John Anderson and his proposed gasoline tax, but I was there for Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. (Remember the Mondale campaign in '84? “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” So much for honesty being the best policy!)

Mind you, I’ve never voted for a candidate just because they favored raising taxes, and I have often voted for candidates who proposed to lower them, if I thought their tax policy was “rational, reasonable, and well-thought-out”. I am not mindlessly devoted to the notion of large government, I don’t cherish a hatred for rich people, I don’t feel personally entitled to luxury at the public expense, I am not lacking in self-reliance or industry or thrift; none of the usual pathological diagnoses that many anti-tax buffs like to apply to their opponents are valid in my case.

But you see, Lord A, difficult as you may find to wrap your brain around it, I think that the government is supposed to spend our money. I want money spent on aviation research, disease control, labor law enforcement, public defenders for the indigent, subsidized health care, disability and old-age pensions, basic science, education, infrastructure, and a host of other things: not just my money, but your money too, and everybody else’s. And since that’s what most other people want too, that’s what we do.

I don’t buy the simplistic argument that every government function except the most basic things like national defense ought to be localized and/or privatized. It would be a hell of a lot more expensive and difficult to create and fund new structures for performing these functions than it is to run the existing governmental institutions that we’ve already labored so hard to set up. I quite agree that the institutions of the federal government are often unwieldy and inefficient, and need reforming. But I’m also aware, unlike a lot of anti-tax enthusiasts, that local and/or private institutions are also often unwieldy, inefficient, and desperately in need of reform, not to mention hideously expensive.

After all, that’s one of the main reasons we have government in the first place. No way am I going to give up on that governmental enterprise just because some people are naive enough to be shocked—shocked!—that some of their tax money is actually going to fund things that they personally don’t happen to need or approve of. (That some of them are even naive enough to imagine that N.O.W. is a tax-funded organization, and that welfare mothers have additional children to improve their standard of living, does not increase my general level of respect for their position, though I try not to hold it against the better-informed ones.) You want to build Libertaria, fine, go build it (somewhere around Alpha Centauri for preference, but you’re welcome to set up your peaceful and honest shop closer to home if you can); but you’re not going to build it here.