Smackdown of the Week, 2008-10-07
[For the hostile audience here at SayUncle, perhaps I should call it my "flaming bag of poo of the week."]
This week, it comes from NYT Columnist Thomas Friedman:
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
H/T: KTK at Lean Left
October 8th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
We have someone who tries to say that all tax money is equal.
What is this, a reverse class warfare tactic or something? Instead of pointing at the rich, we have lefties now saying that we are all equally taxed for the things government does?
The military is a legitimate role of the federal government. I’m not so sure about the bail outs. But I’m damn sure welfare is not a part of buying civilization, neither is pork, and sorry, but neither is medicare.
To claim that our taxes only pay the military, police, schools and medicare is disingenuous to the extreme.
Are you sure the smack down isn’t against lefty ideals of what the government is supposed to control that was left unsaid?
October 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Hmmmm.
Friedman is often oblivious of the obvious.
October 8th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
He says all this ignoring the context of Biden’s statement.
It wasn’t about paying taxes, it was about paying more taxes.
BTW, how can it be fair for rich people to pay a higher percentage of income taxes? If I have to pay, say 15%, so should Bill Gates.
October 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
The smackdown is against the disconnect between taxes and the things taxes pay for. I’ve called out others over this before: whether you like what the government does or not, the bottom line is that a dollar spent is a dollar taxed. Every dollar we spend today without the tax revenue to cover it is merely a tax increase at some future date.
Pork gets a lot of press, but at the end of the day, it’s only a tiny portion of the budget. The overwhelming majority of the federal budget (over 73%, by my count) consists of Defense and Homeland Security, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt. Our irresponsible “borrow-and-spend” policies of the last seven years or so only increase that last item, and the others, while you might not like them, remain overwhelmingly popular with the American public at large.
So as Friedman states, if you want to argue that we shouldn’t do all that stuff with government money, that’s fine, but if you argue that we should do it, we just shouldn’t actually, you know, pay for it, that’s ludicrous.
And for what it’s worth, I’m critical of my own side on this as well. We’ve got to reconnect taxes with the things taxes pay for. Too many people have bought into “supply side” bullshit that says we can have our cake (low taxes) and eat it (spend, spend, spend), too.
October 8th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Rusty:
If you’re going to spend more, you need to tax more. If not now, later. So your objection amounts to a distinction without a difference. Fiscal responsibility demands that you generate enough tax revenue to pay for government expenditures. (Of course, now “fiscal responsibility” seems to have come to mean lower taxes, all else be damned.)
October 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
The problem is that it fails all logic.
There are two seperate false dichotomies in the argument.
And that doesn’t even include treating opinion as fact.
False Dichotomy #1: Not *higher* taxes is not equal to *no* taxes. There exists the options 1)Higher Taxes, 2) Current Taxes, 3) Lower Taxes. There also exists 100% taxation as a subset of #1 and No taxes as a subset of #3. Saying “Not #1″ is eqivalent to a small subset of #3 is glaringly false.
Opinion Stated as Fact: Higher taxes = “Fair Share”. One may believe that anything less that a 90% marginal tax rate on income in excess of $100k is “Fair” but one may also believe it isn’t. Neither of these opinions, by any objective measures, can be considered objectively correct.
2) Not patriotic is not equal to unpatriotic. It could be apatriotic. Some actions are patriotic, some actions are unpatriotic and some actions are neither. This can be seen in the blatently stupid “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. Sorry, but dissent, in and of, itself is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic. The KKK dissents from the belief that all races are equal. That does *not* make them patriotic. In fact, I would argue that their dissent is *un*patriotic. That I dissent from the opinion that Mac is superior to PC doesn’t have jack squat to do with patriotism.
If you are going to leave a flaming bag of poo on the porch, at least leave something that can’t be put out with a water pistol.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
As for “A dollar spent is a dollar taxed”: There are 2 problems with this.
It assumes that all dollars spent are equal. It, further more, assumes that the raw dollar amount taxed is the issue.
Neither of these are true.
No one here argues that gov’t has no function. Further no one here argues that taxation isn’t the way to pay for those things it needs to do. The contention is that gov’t needs to do a heck of a lot less than it does. A dollar spent on police is not the same as a dollar spent on welfare entitlements. The first I am OK paying for, the second, not so much. It is the .gov’s job to protect our rights, not provide our wants. Taxes collected to protect our rights are acceptable, taxes collected to provide our wants are not. I reserve the right to object to the latter and contend that doing so does not imply that I also object to the former. The gov’t should only do those things that are essential.
I also believe it is incumbent on the gov’t to maintain the absolute lowest tax rates possible to pay for those essentials.
So, for essentials, the gov’t should only collect what is necessary, for non-essentials, gov’t should collect *nothing*.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
And in case it must be stated, raising tax revenue != raising tax rates. If you are on the right hand side of the Laffer curve, you can increase revenue by lowering the tax rate and encouraging production such that it more than offsets the reduction.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
So tgirsch, I guess you and Biden don’t itemize.
Or even take the standard deductions.
There is nothing in the tax code that says you can’t pay MORE in taxes than absolutely necessary. You post your returns from the last 3 years showing that you’ve paid without any deductions or taking any credits, and I’ll consider you not a complete hypocrite.
Since paying higher taxes is so patriotic, I assmume you’re doing it.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yu-Ain:
That still doesn’t address the primary problem, however. Whether or not the government ought to be doing what it’s doing, what it’s doing has to be paid for, and if not today, then tomorrow. For over two decades now, small government types have put the lower taxes cart before the reduced spending horse. What ever happened to balanced budgets?
If you completely eliminated Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (the big entitlement programs), left taxes and all other spending where they are today, and used the surplus to pay down the national debt, it would take almost thirteen years to pay it off. Let me state that again: if you eliminated all the stuff you wanted to eliminate, and didn’t lower taxes, it would take well over a decade to pay for all the stuff we’ve already done.
Every year that we go on with nearly half-a-trillion dollar deficits only exacerbates that problem. So it’s very much true that a dollar spent is a dollar taxed. Actually, thanks to interest and inflation, a dollar spent is generally significantly more than a dollar taxed.
Unless you’re suggesting that the government should simply default on its obligations for the spending it has done that you don’t agree with, but I seriously doubt that’s what you’re saying.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
If you are on the right hand side of the Laffer curve, you can increase revenue by lowering the tax rate and encouraging production such that it more than offsets the reduction.
Setting aside the oversimplification, the fact of the matter is that we haven’t been on that side of the Laffer Curve in nearly a quarter of a century. That’s abundantly clear to anybody who looks at the history of tax revenues when corrected for inflation.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
wizardpc:
Until you post proof that you’ve personally put your life on the line for every military and police action you’ve ever supported, I suggest you drink a piping hot cup of STFU on allegations of hypocrisy. Your cry of hypocrisy is absurd on its face.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
So you don’t really believe in paying higher taxes, then. You believe in ME paying higher taxes because I’m more succesful in the marketplace than YOU.
And if there was a draft, your counterpoint might be valid.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
What does a draft have to do with anything? The allegation of hypocrisy stems from personally failing to voluntarily do the things that one advocates for. What’s “voluntary” about a draft?
And for what it’s worth, the tax policies I support (which, for the record, are not being advocated by either candidate) would result in higher taxes for me personally, as a large majority of Americans are LESS “successful in the marketplace” than I am. But why is it somehow hypocritical to suggest ideas on the condition that we do them together, or not at all?
Even setting that aside, however, I have no idea where people get the idea that we must always voluntarily do what we want to require of others. By your bizarre standard, the United States must completely rid itself of all nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants before it has any moral standing to tell Iran what it can and cannot do with nuclear energy…
October 8th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Here’s where the draft comes in: No one in the police or military is forced to be there. The tax policies you are advocating WOULD force me to pay them. So you’re trying to force me to do something you won’t do voluntarily. That’s the hypocrisy.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
And, in supporting a war without volunteering to fight in it, you’re forcing soldiers to do something YOU won’t do voluntarily. I fail to see the distinction. It’s not as if enlisted Army members can say “I don’t support this war, therefore I quit.” And if you think the war is that important, there’s nothing stopping you from enlisting to help fight it.
[NOTE: I have no idea whether or not YOU PERSONALLY support the wars we're CURRENTLY FIGHTING, but that's irrelevant. I'm talking in general terms. By the standard you've established, anyone who supports a war but does not voluntarily go fight in it is a hypocrite.]
October 8th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Who forced them to be soldiers? No one.
Who would like to force me to pay taxes? You.
I have a hard time thinking you don’t see the distinction. One absolutely cannot avoid paying taxes. One can EASILY avoid being a soldier.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Pathetic that the need to twist Palins words into something she didn’t say is so great with the MSM propaganda machine… but that aside:
“I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
We might be ok if it stopped there… But with the Left, it doesn’t stop there, with the Left, it never stops. With the Left it’s all about shafting the responsible productive members of society to rescue the irresponsible, stupid, and criminal from the consequences of their bad choices. Will your hard work support your family? Will your hard work support your beliefs? Will your hard work support your faith? It will not. With the Left, there is no reward for being responsible, there is no reward for hard work, there is no reward for being patriotic. With the Left, there is no right and wrong, there is no good and evil, there is no liberty, there is only the State, there to take from you at the discretion and direction of the political elite and redistribute to those that keep them in power…
tgrish, go (re)read Animal Farm.
QOTD shamelessly stolen from another blog:
“If this is freedom, at what level of confiscation are we no longer free?” –Harry Browne
October 8th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
You ALREADY have to pay taxes, no matter what I say or do. And I can’t unilaterally raise your taxes, either. All I can do is advocate for or against policy changes, something which you are also free to do.
But the part you’re obviously too dense to get is that you’re holding me to a different standard than the one you’re holding yourself to: Before I can advocate for a policy change, I must personally engage in whatever change I’m advocating for. For you, not so much. The personal stake I have in the policy I advocate for is that I, too have to pay higher taxes. What personal stake does the non-fighting war supporter have in the policy they’ve advocated for?
October 8th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
“And, in supporting a war without volunteering to fight in it, you’re forcing soldiers to do something YOU won’t do voluntarily.”
– uhhh, no. How did you jump to this conclusion about forcing soldiers to fight? You always surprise me with your superman-like leaps of logic.
- So anyway, does this mean that 40 percent of Americans, who pay little to no taxes, are less patriotic than the top 20 that do? That is the posts and Biden’s illogic taken to its logical conclusion.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
tgirsh:
Are you advocating Anarchism?
All votes are about the majority forcing the minority to do things, with the threat of the use of deadly force to make them do it.
( and yes, it is deadly force … try insisting on your right to littler in front of a cop, and completely disobey his attempts to make you stop, or the court system trying to punish you for doing it. You will eventually get shot if you don’t, at some point, conform to the will of the majority. )
October 8th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
tgirsh:
Are you advocating Anarchism?
All votes are about the majority forcing the minority to do things, with the threat of the use of deadly force to make them do it.
( and yes, it is deadly force … try insisting on your right to litter in front of a cop, and completely disobey his attempts to make you stop, or the court system trying to punish you for doing it. You will eventually get shot if you don’t, at some point, conform to the will of the majority. )
October 8th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
No, what they are saying is that the Fed should have a tax charging the minimum amount possible for essential services, like military, police, schools, and a limited few others.
If YOU want people to benefit from welfare then YOU must pay extra taxes to pay for it.
I pay for my own health care, why should I or my employer also have to be taxed more to pay for someone elses? If you wish for universal health care then you can check a box on your tax return that says you agree to pay more taxes to fund universal health care.
Direct voluntary payment versus voting in a huge governmental expense and then looking around for a way to pay for it (or not and just making the deficit even larger). If the people who want universal health care don’t wish to check the box and pay higher taxes for it, then the system will be underfunded and shut down.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
My copy of the Constitution has ‘provide for the common defense’ in it. I’m still going over it looking for those parts where I get a cheap interest rate on a big or free house or where I’m supposed to get my universal healthcare.
Regards,
Rabbit.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
You really don’t see a difference between volunteering to do a job and being forced to do something at gunpoint?
October 8th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
anon:
Harry Browne? Really? C’mon, libertarians are just anarchists without the balls or integrity to admit it…
Dan:
Little or no federal income taxes != little or no taxes. As free market libertarian types are so fond of pointing out, any time you buy anything from a US corporation, you’re paying taxes.
Kristopher:
To borrow an overused conservative meme, if you don’t like it, you’re free to leave. More importantly, you’re free to argue against it. You’re also free to whine like a spoiled child when you lose that argument, which is what libertarian types generally are left with when immensely popular social programs continue to be immensely popular.
Matt:
Let’s try this:
“I pay for my own safety, why should I or my employer also have to be taxed more to pay for someone elses?” [sic]
This is fun!
If the people who want universal health care don’t wish to check the box and pay higher taxes for it, then the system will be underfunded and shut down.
Actually, that’s precisely what I’m talking about when I say that we need to reconnect taxes with the things they pay for. And that works both ways: new spending must be coupled with new taxes, and tax cuts must be accompanied by reduced spending. Unfortunately, we’ve bought all this supply side bullshit and have totally disconnected spending from revenue, and vice versa.
But here’s the problem: When Americans are asked if would rather have lower taxes or a balanced budget, they pick a balanced budget by better than a two-to-one margin. When asked if they would rather have lower taxes with reduced social services, or higher taxes with expanded social services, they pick the latter by a healthy margin.
You want to meaningfully reduce government spending? You need to make massive cuts to social security, medicare, and defense. Everything else is chump change. But suggesting even moderate cuts to those three things is political suicide, and everybody knows it.
Which is why anti-government and anti-tax types hate connecting those dots: they know that what they advocate for is immensely unpopular, and a losing proposition; so in the immortal words of Uncle, they have to lie to win. “Hey, we can cut your taxes and expand Medicare!” (And double the national debt in 8 years, but Shhhh! about that part!)
October 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“Little or no federal income taxes != little or no taxes. As free market libertarian types are so fond of pointing out, any time you buy anything from a US corporation, you’re paying taxes.”
- Actually, the point being that if it is more patriotic to pay higher taxes, as Biden, Friedman, and yourself are advocating, then those who pay less are less patriotic, right?
October 8th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Rabbit:
I’m still trying to figure out how a war of choice in a country that hadn’t made any significant hostile gestures toward us in over a decade constitutes the “common defense.” We weren’t defending anything, we were attacking.
And if questionable preemptive foreign wars count as providing for “common defense,” then protecting the market certainly counts as providing for the “general welfare” of the country. Now personally, I don’t buy either one of those; but if we’re going to get all nitpicky over constitutionality, let’s talk about going to war without a formal declaration of war, or about having a standing army despite that being explicitly unconstitutional…
October 8th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
wizardpc:
Just how “voluntary” is it when you don’t have the right to quit at any time?
Dan:
Biden’s (and,by extension, Friedman’s) is a comparative standard of patriotism — it’s not about whether you pay more taxes than I do, or vice versa; it’s about whether each one of us pays more taxes in time of war than in time of peace. It’s about exposing the inherent hypocrisy of someone advocating for the government to do more, but simultaneously claiming that they shouldn’t have to pay more.
During World War II, Americans were asked (and in many cases, yes, required) to make profound sacrifices in support of the war effort, even if they themselves weren’t fighting in the war. Most of the commenters in this thread would piss and moan and whine until the cows come home at such a suggestion. “Freedom” to them apparently means the freedom to divorce their own actions from the things they support. “Sure, I support the war! Just don’t expect me to actually do anything, other than to say I support the war! Look, I have a magnetic yellow ribbon! I’ve done my part!”
October 8th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I’ll ask again: Who forced them to join in the first place?
And you’re not asking everyone to pay more, you’re asking the top 5 percent to pay more, and the bottom 95 percent to pay less (or receive a bigger refund check that’s not really a refund)
October 8th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Biden said “It’s time to be patriotic, Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help America out of the rut, and the way to do that is they’re still gonna pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.”
– So the implication is that people that have not been paying overly high taxes before were not patriotic. His words.
And during WWII, people supported their president, Demo or Repub. So would that mean that not supporting the president in a time of war is unpatriotic? But I really do not care about the patriot debate, since the libs keep changing the meaning all the time.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Thirteen years? Hell, it’ll take 30 years for most people to pay off the house they just bought. You act like that’s an unacceptable lenght of time.
There is also more room in the budget for cuts beside those things you listed. While we do need police departments, they don’t need an APC with a Belt-fed .50 cal. We need schools but they don’t need computers in every classroom. (Hint: the problem with today’s education system isn’t a lack of per-student expenses, but a system which teaches that there are few consequences for failure). And since when did funding the National Endowment for the Arts, become an essential function of gov’t?
I also dispute your assertion that it’s “abundantly clear” that we are on the left side of the Laffer curve. Nobel Prize winner for Economics Robert Mundell disagrees with you and thinks raising tax rates would be detrimental. He may be incorrect, Nobel Prizes don’t make you infallible, but since such a person is not likely to make such a rookie mistake as neglecting inflation, I would hardly say that the issue is “abundantly clear”.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
tgirsch,
The other option when the .gov is asked to “do more” in one area is for the .gov to “do less” in another. Conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) have been wanting the latter for a very long time.
And when Democrats start pledging to do the latter conservatives might just consider voting for them.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
tgirsch:
Um, no…
Paying for the common defense is what is in the constitution. You know, security.
You may not like that the US voted to go to war with Iraq, however a preemptive war is still in fact defense.
Now if you want to get into a constitutional debate, where exactly does it say you must have a “formal declaration of war” before you can bomb someone?
I see the part that says “Congress shall have the power to … declare War”, but it doesn’t say they must come up with a “formal” declaration of it. Where is that “formal” part? It could be informal, like voting to allow Bush to attack Iraq.
As for a standing army, well it does say that congress must approve funding every 2 years, which they do. If you can prove to everyone that there is not any threat to us in the near future, then sure go ahead and reduce or eliminate our standing army.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
If tgirsch can’t understand the difference between paying taxes to fund the things that the government is supposed to do, and paying taxes to send billions of dollars to Africa, I don’t think a conversation is really possible.
It’s not patriotic to pay taxes for programs that are beyond the purview of the government. It is perhaps nationalist. But hardly patriotic.
Among those things that are not patriotic to pay for, but are very possibly nationalistic to pay for, are Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. They do not support one’s country, but instead one’s government.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
That I partially agree with. Only problem is who the increase goes to. Raise my taxes to pay for a war (we shouldn’t have even fought to begin with)? OK. Raise my taxes so that someone who does not work can get paid for sitting on their butt? No.
October 8th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Oh yeah, forgot to add to that if taxes are increased for a legitimate reason (like to pay for a war) it should be at the expense of everyone, not just the rich. Tax increase for all or don’t bother with the thing itself. Once you get everyone paying for it, it becomes real. Asking for something and making the rich pay for it is very dishonest. It may be no cost to some, but it is a great cost to others.
Disclaimer: I am in no way even remotely considered anywhere near rich by any stretch of the imagination or trick of accounting.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Sheesh, I step away for a couple of hours, and a whole lot rolls in…
wizardpc:
Who’s forcing you to remain a citizen of the US, if you don’t like our government and our tax structures?
As for the military, in all but a very few cases, of course nobody forced them to join, but that’s irrelevant anyway. You’re still asking someone else to do something that you yourself are unwilling to do. And because they cannot quit if they don’t like it, for all intents and purposes, they’re forced to comply with what YOU advocated for — you’re effectively requiring someone else to do what you’re advocating for, whether THEY want to or not. Why you can’t recognize that as less than voluntary is beyond me.
Dan:
Penalty on the use of “overly high” — what Biden and others are calling for still amounts to a rate of taxation substantially lower than what existed under St. Reagan, even for the wealthiest taxpayers. And I still don’t see what’s wrong with arguing that it’s patriotic to do more when the country needs more.
Now you’re doubtless going to argue that the country should do less, and that’s certainly your right, however that has to come first.
And during WWII, people supported their president, Demo or Repub. So would that mean that not supporting the president in a time of war is unpatriotic?
I’ll refer you to T.R. on that one. Also, please note that W enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support, both in the Congress and among the general public, with his military action in Afghanistan. He enjoyed very much the same thing in Iraq, until the point when the American people figured out that they’d been sold a bill of goods.
Yu-Ain:
The other option when the .gov is asked to “do more” in one area is for the .gov to “do less” in another. Conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) have been wanting the latter for a very long time.
That’s all well and good, and I agree. But at the end of the day, we still ought to be balancing the budget. If that means doing less, fine, but then let’s have that debate. Figure out what the “less” is, and get the general public to agree on that.
The problem is, because taxes are so blatantly divorced from the things that they pay for, we can’t have that debate honestly or intelligently. Far too many people are of the mistaken impression that there’s no relationship between the two, and that’s just patently false.
Thirteen years? Hell, it’ll take 30 years for most people to pay off the house they just bought. You act like that’s an unacceptable lenght of time. [sic]
No, that wasn’t my point at all. My point was that even if you completely eliminated programs which are vastly popular, and didn’t cut taxes at all, all of these unrealistic premises, it would still take a very long time to pay off the irresponsible spending we’ve already done. (Never mind the economic chaos that would ensue if Social Security, Medicare, and the military-industrial complex suddenly disappeared overnight.) The fact that those types of cuts are impossible was precisely my point. Since those types of cuts aren’t feasible, then if we want fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, raising taxes is our only viable option (or, at a minimum, finding a way to drastically increase tax revenues). There just aren’t enough cuts to be made.
But neither candidate, and indeed, neither party, has the balls to admit that. McCain’s going to get the budget in order by eliminating earmarks? Puh-lease, they amount to less that half a percent of federal spending. Won’t even make a dent. And Obama’s not much better. The best that could be said for his tax plan and budgetary plan is that his deficits won’t be nearly as big as McCain’s deficits — but they’ll both still have massive deficits.
All those cuts that you defiantly list amount to child’s play. Besides the things I listed, you could eliminate absolutely everything else that the federal government does, and you’d barely cut the budget by a quarter. Don’t like the department of education? Eliminate it. Congratulations, you’ve just eliminated the second-largest single item not on my list, and saved a whopping 1.9¢ on the dollar. Throw in Health and Human Services (the largest not on my list), and you’ve saved another 2.3¢, for a total of 4.2¢! Yippee, skippy! And that’s assuming that you wouldn’t preserve anything at all that either of those departments does. (Nobody really needs a CDC, an FDA, or GSLs, after all…)
My point isn’t that there’s no fat to be cut. Of course there is. My point is that there’s not enough fat to be cut. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to raise taxes. If we stopped wasting money tomorrow, we still have to pay back all the money we borrowed and wasted in the past.
I also dispute your assertion that it’s “abundantly clear” that we are on the left side of the Laffer curve.
Over the last three rounds of tax cuts, revenues have utterly failed to keep pace with the rate of inflation. In other words, when corrected for inflation, revenues have gone down as a result of tax cuts. According to the prediction, if we were on the right side of the Laffer curve, tax cuts should have resulted in increased revenues. They did not. Further, if we were on the right side of the curve, an increase in taxes should decrease revenues. Under Clinton-era tax increases, revenues in fact went up, and the economy boomed. Your Nobel prize winning friend can speculate however he wants to, but he can’t change history. The numbers speak for themselves.
Matt:
When, exactly, did we “declare war” on Iraq? Do you honestly contend that we are “at war” with Iraq? And what, precisely, might an informal declaration of war look like? By definition, if Congress is declaring war, it’s doing so formally.
The constitution says that “no appropriation [to fund the army] shall be for a longer term than two years.” True, that’s not an explicit prohibition on a standing army, it seems like a de facto one. If the army’s supposed to be around full-time, why have the time constraint at all? No such constraint exists for the navy. At a minimum, it seems like the military making long-term commitments to pay others (long term R&D projects, for example, and enlistments longer than two years) would violate the spirit of that requirement.
I’m not arguing that we should do away with the army, of course; nothing of the sort. I’m saying that pretty much everybody, irrespective of political leanings, is pragmatic with respect to the constitution. That includes so-called originalists like Scalia and Thomas, by the way.
Only problem is who the increase goes to.
But that’s a separate question. If the government spends money, we have to pay it, whether we like it or not. You can (and absolutely should) argue that it should stop spending money in ways we don’t like, but until it does, we’re still on the hook. So you’ve got to pay for it, and taxes are how we pay for it. The alternative is bankrupting the country, which is what we actually have been doing. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that yes, it’s unpatriotic to intentionally bankrupt the country just because we don’t like paying taxes, or don’t like where some of those taxes go.
[Also, I feel compelled to add at this point that paying people for "sitting on their butt" makes up only a tiny fraction of spending. On the order of the 2¢ on the dollar I mentioned above. We can and should reform this, but it fails to address the larger issue.]
[Increased taxes] should be at the expense of everyone, not just the rich.
Well, in a vacuum, I tend to agree, but in real life not so much. But given recent history, and the fact that recent tax cuts have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, I don’t have a problem with the next tax increases overwhelmingly cost the wealthy. And, as libertarians are fond of pointing out, increasing corporate income taxes amounts to a tax increase on everyone.
The hell of it is, in the wake of 9/11 and the runup to the Iraq war, the President could have canceled his planned tax cuts, and even called for increased taxes across the board to support the war effort, and had this pass overwhelmingly. But instead, he cut taxes and told us to go shopping. Oh, well.
As I intimated earlier, something closer to a Reagan-era tax system would probably be pretty good. Neither candidate is proposing anything of the sort, of course. I have more complicated ideas for fundamental tax system reform, but that’s another topic for another day.
RoughEdge:
If you can’t understand the difference between paying for the things that government is supposed to do, and paying for the things it actually does do, then you’re right, there isn’t much point. By your logic, a teenager shouldn’t have to pay for beer he drinks, because he’s not supposed to be drinking it.
If you want the government to stop doing things that you think it’s not supposed to do, then by all means, fight to get it to stop doing them. But that doesn’t mean you get to pick and choose which taxes to pay and which taxes not to pay, just because you don’t approve of where some of it is going.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I can play this game too; We’re not a hostile audience. You’re a hostile poster.
Now that makes us the victims and you the perpetrator. That little trick is as old as the hills.
You’re not a victim here. Either your ideas can stand up to rigorous cross-examination or they can’t. If they can, you’ll welcome the cross-examination as an opportunity. If not, you can always claim victim status and put us on the defensive, except that I’m not buying it.
Now what is the basis of this argument– that Republicans suck because they’re almost as bad as Democrats? OK. I agree.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I wish she would’ve said to Biden, “Look, let’s say I believe you when you say that paying taxes is patriotic. How much more have you paid that you owed?”
October 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am
tgirsh,
I can tell you exactly: we declared war (note the absence of scare-quotes) on October 16, 2002, when President Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, which had passed the House on Oct 10, and the Senate on Oct 11. Any other questions?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Lyle:
Calm down. I’m not trying to play victim, or anything of the sort. And I think most of the people who’ve known me on-line would vouch for that. Calling this a “hostile audience” wasn’t a “trick” of any kind, and it wasn’t intended to be demeaning or anything of the sort. I was just making a joke around a commenter’s allegation (mostly true) that I come here from time to time and drop “flaming bags of poo.”
But the truth is, echo chambers are boring. I can stay at my main blog and post to people who already agree with me, or I can come here from time to time and actually engage with people who don’t. When you engage with serious people who disagree with you (and there are a number of those here), you learn a hell of a lot more than when you just sit in your happy love-fest of agreement all day.
Kirk:
Sorry, but AUMF != declaration of war. Had it been a declaration of war, it never would have passed. See, for example, Henke, not exactly a liberal source. Or, you could look at the list of formal declarations of war made by the United States, and notice a conspicuous absence. Or, you could look to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
If Bush’s own top lawyer says it ain’t a declaration of war, I think it’s pretty clear the Bush administration didn’t view it as a declaration of war.
Thanks for playing, though…
October 9th, 2008 at 7:20 am
TGirsch, give me a break. Sure, there are diplomatic reasons for “authorizing force” instead of “declaring war,” but anyone who voted for the AUMF and didn’t think he was declaring war is too stupid to tie his own shoelaces, let alone make policy for the rest of us. Further, the Constitution doesn’t have any separate provision for AUMF, so if all involved really thought “military force” on Saddam Hussein would not constitute a “war,” there was no reason for Congress to be voting on the AUMF at all.
Thanks for playing, though.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Xrlq:
Here, let me make a minor adjustment:
There, now we’re in near-complete agreement.
Actually, I mostly agree with the unaltered statement, too. Everyone should have known that the Bush administration was going to use it as though it were a declaration of war (which is why many of us opposed it from the get-go), but that doesn’t mean it actually was a declaration of war. Everyone should have known that the administration was lying when it claimed to want the AUMF to use as “leverage.” It wanted the AUMF so it could UMF, as it had wanted to do for several years before it even came to power.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am
tgirsh:
I was gonna chime in with some logical category analysis, but I see that Yu-Ain Gonnano beat me to it.
To be fair, most political claims don’t pass through a rigorous logical categorization. But that just makes this one a member of a large set of useless arguments which have a little emotional punch, but don’t survive analysis.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
tgirsh, you seem really worked up about the whole going to war thing, have you expressed your displeasure on the Terrorists’ sites? Realistically, they declared war a long time ago and have been killing Americans for decades. Strictly speaking, all the USA has done is open new fronts on enemy soil. I’m thinking perhaps your anger is misplaced.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
anon:
Actually, I strongly favored (and continue to favor) using the US military to aggressively go after al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups. That’s precisely why I was so upset when our government decided that all of that should take a back seat so we could go invade a country that wasn’t even on the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror at the time.
But your opinion on that is going to vary based on whether or not you believe the lie that Iraq was an integral part of the war on terror. If you recognized it as the distraction that it really was, you’d be at least as mad as I am.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Since this hasn’t yet been said:
tgirsch:
[...] then protecting the market certainly counts as providing for the “general welfare” of the country.
I don’t recall seeing anything about “providing the general welfare” in the constitution, only promoting it. Had the US government been established to “provide” the common welfare, we’d be in a communist society, all being equals, and ya know what? I don’t like pulling dead weight. I make plenty of mistakes of my own, and I certainly don’t need to be forced into fixing the mistakes of others.
Call it semantics if you will, but they don’t exactly mean the same thing. Much like the declaration mentions the “pursuit of happiness,” not that happiness is guaranteed.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Stabilizing the market doesn’t promote the general welfare?
P.S. Article I, Section 8:
“Provide for,” not “promote.”
For what it’s worth, the general welfare clause has been twisted from its original meaning beyond all recognition since the days of FDR, but that’s precisely the point I was making. People find ways to dance around the meanings of the Constitution when it suits them, and that’s far from exclusive to liberals.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
“If you recognized it as the distraction that it really was, you’d be at least as mad as I am.”
Hmmm, maybe. Perhaps I should pick up a copy of your book on Anti-Jihadi Middle Eastern War Strategy. Is that on Amazon then?
Admittedly this global geo-politics stuff can be hard to follow sometimes…
After all, when the Japanese Bombed Pearl Harbor, the USA declared war on Germany, and invaded France and North Africa… of course FDR was a Dem, so I doubt you’ll question the order of battle on that one.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
anon:
I’m almost positive we’ve been through this before, however, I don’t mind educating you again. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we declared war on Japan. When we did that, because of their alliances, Germany declared war on us. We declared war in response to them declaring war on us, not in response to Japan’s attack on us.
So, to review:
1. Japan attacks US, US responds with declaration of war
2. Germany declares war on US
3. US declares war on Germany
Your version of post-9/11 events reads like the underpants gnomes:
1. Al Qaeda (based in Afghanistan) attacks US
2. ????
3. US invades Iraq
October 10th, 2008 at 7:05 am
True. The reason it was actually a declaration of war was because it authorized the use of military force. Congress can’t “authorize” a de facto war without effectively declaring it. Whether said declaration contains the magic words “we hereby declare war” is irrelevant.
That some Congressmen may have believed Bush would use a de facto declaration of war as a bargaining chip to avoid actually fighting is immaterial. Being legally at war with another country and actually fighting an active battle are not the same. Cf. the Sitzkrieg, a.k.a. the Bore War, from September, 1939 to May, 1940, where England was every bit as much at war with Germany, in law and in fact, as America was with Iraq from October 2002 through March of 2003.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:28 am
The reason it was actually a declaration of war was because it authorized the use of military force. Congress can’t “authorize” a de facto war without effectively declaring it.
And, of course, the Congress never does stuff that the Constitution doesn’t allow it to do… Maybe it’s nitpicky of me to emphasize the difference between a de facto war and a de jure one, but you’ve never struck me as the type to be overly concerned with the picking of nits (apart from disagreeing with the particular nits from time to time, of course).
America was with Iraq from October 2002 through March of 2003.
What have we been doing since then, and what’s the constitutional authority to back that? (Not a “trap” question of any kind — I genuinely don’t know…)
October 11th, 2008 at 12:53 am
There is no difference between a de jure war and a de jure AUMF. Either Congress voted to A the UMF, or they did not. Any Congresscritter who voted for or against the AUMF without understanding that the vote was on whether or not to A the President to UMF is a retard. Any Congresscritter who voted for it and later complained about the President acting on such A is a weasel, and one indistinguishable from a hypothetical weasel who voted for a formal “Declaration of War” and trusted that to be a mere bargaining chip that would not result in actual fighting.
IOW, Congress either authorized what we all know as a war, or they didn’t. If they did, it’s a war by another name. If they didn’t, it was no AUMF, either. To distinguish the two is to elevate form over substance.
As to what we’ve done since March 2003, I don’t believe that the AUMF has been revoked. Certainly Congress has chosen to fund the troops there, as they have in Germany, South Korea, and elsewhere. You don’t need a declaration of war to station troops around the world.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Xrlq:
On the non-difference difference, point taken, but then why not just call it a declaration of war? If there’s not an important difference, at least in perception if nothing else, then why not call it what it is?
You don’t need a declaration of war to station troops around the world.
But you do generally need a treaty, don’t you?