A headline in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal: “GOP sees winning call in tax break for all.” Although the topic is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, I sure hope that Republicans aren’t going to run away from the serious path to reforming government—which is the road for deep cuts.
Obviously there’s a need for deep cuts at both the state and federal level too. As this column has stated often, to pay down debt—revenues must exceed expenditures. We’re miles away from being able to pay down anything. I’m in no mood to put up with superficial garbage from Republicans who love to call for tax cuts while ignoring the insane spending that has gone on under both Rs and Ds for decades.
Speaking of insane—the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune should seek psychiatric help. Their Sunday editorial called for a one-year extension of the Bush tax cuts. It’s titled, “Out of debt,” and subtitled “A tax increase is no way to start.”
The Trib writes that it doesn’t—
—make sense to place a new weight on the economy when it is already struggling to grow.
It won’t be easy, the Trib says—
—but it’s essential if we hope to foster lasting prosperity while sparing the taxpayers of tomorrow an insupportable debt burden.
So the newspaper that did more than any other publication on the planet to help Barack Obama rise to the presidency has decided now that it’s bad that our elected leaders continue to run-up a lot of debt.
The Trib’s political judgment is as sound as its economic judgment. The Trib wants the Bush tax cuts extended for just one more year. And then it’ll be okay for our political leaders to enact—now get this—it’s almost too good—”revenue measures.”
That’s another way of saying “tax increases” for you Obama voters.
By the way, the health care law that passed several months ago is being called the largest tax increase in U.S. history.
Back to the spending side. The Heritage Foundation had another one of its great posts in its “Morning Bell” series by Conn Carroll titled “It’s about the Spending, Speaker.” In it—is this statement—simple enough to be repeated by every Republican running for office:
The solution to our economic troubles is not higher taxes, it is less spending.
Less spending—got it? We arrive at less by cutting. Cut baby cut.
