No more tax increases: Why Grover Norquist is right

The Lakeland Times ^ | 11/30/2012 | Richard Moore

[KeyLargo]

No more tax increases: Why Grover Norquist is right

Richard Moore Investigative Reporter

There was quite a dust-up in the Republican Party this past week when Georgia U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss uttered the unthinkable and said he would no longer adhere to the famous Taxpayer Protection Pledge conceived by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Chambliss was blunt in renouncing his commitment not to vote to raise taxes: “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge. If we do it his (Norquist’s) way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”

Now this is not particularly surprising coming as it does so quickly after President Obama’s re-election, which has sent weak-kneed, spineless Republicans hotfooting it from their principles. And it is not particularly surprising coming from Sen. Chambliss because conservative groups have already put a target on his back for his past RINO proclivities.

While it might not be surprising, it is telling. Mr. Chambliss said straight up that we must raise taxes, or we will continue in debt. It is a Democratic argument, and it is false, as most Democratic arguments are. Let’s take a look why.

Follow the conditional statement, and there can be only two possibilities to validate it. Either revenues are slumping in dramatic, irreversible fashion, and so more are needed to meet the realistic, indeed necessary, demands of the modern state, or we are held hostage by nondiscretionary spending, that is to say, we’re spending so much because we have to, not because we want to.

Implicit in the first possibility is that the money stream is historically low and not likely to recover sufficiently. ...

[KeyLargo]

"Now let’s look at means-tested welfare programs, both using Voegeli’s numbers and figures from the Cato Institute for the period 1965 to 2009. In Voegeli’s calculation, welfare spending jumped by 583 percent. In fact, he said, the welfare state grew from 26 percent of federal outlays in 1965 to 61 percent in 2008.

Using the Cato Institute’s figures from an April 2012 report, federal spending on welfare and anti-poverty programs increased from $178 billion in 1965 to $668 billion in 2009, a 375-percent increase in constant dollars, while total welfare spending – including state and local – rose from $256 billion to $908 billion. On a per capita basis, Cato reported, federal welfare spending jumped by more than 900 percent, from $1,625 to $14,848.

Choose your poison; either number is astonishing. The sad part is, one can debate whether we are more secure, but the poverty rate in 2009 – and today – stands where it did in 1965. Despite a massive infusion of cash, relentlessly growing the welfare state hasn’t worked as a matter of national policy. The nation lost the War on Poverty."

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It’s the spending, stupid.

[KeyLargo]

“It’s the spending, stupid.”

Yes, for any that actually TAKE the TIME to read the writer’s article they would know that....

“That brings us to the other side of the equation: Spending. Federal expenditures have skyrocketed to an historic high of GDP. Everyone knows this. And it keeps racing higher. In October the federal deficit was $120 billion, or 22 percent, higher than last October. We just banked our fifth trillion-dollar deficit in a row, another first for the nation.

The question is whether the spending can be reasonably reduced without causing chaos in the land.

The general figures would suggest it can. In 1980, the government entitled about 30 percent of the population; today the figure is close to 50 percent. Nearly 110 million Americans received welfare in 2010 – that doesn’t include Medicare and Social Security – 47.1 million people collected food stamps, and the president promises even more entitlements.”

[cripplecreek]

It’s the spending, stupid.

Yup and nobody needs a scumbag islamopologist to tell them.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The question is whether the spending can be reasonably reduced without causing chaos in the land.

We have long since gone past the point of no return.

"Chaos in the land" is coming regardless of any ineffectual thing the heterophobes in Washington do now.

There are consequences to destroying the currency. Severe consequences. Fatal consequences.

[major-pelham]

Raise taxes on the middle class right now. It wont ever happen again once they have to start paying again.

[asinclair]

One of the big problems I see in this discussion is that the people who are against tax increases don't spell out where the spending problems really are. After reading diatribe after diatribe, I think I'm starting to see the shape of the failure cascade:

• The cost of doing business continues to rise by the imposition of regulations by the Federal government; how many of those regulations are really necessary?
• The cost of medicine continues to rise because the lawyers do after-the-fact analysis and assignment of liability; he-said she-said dueling experts don't help, either
• The body of law continues to grow and grow, so "experts", not the writers of law, need to interpret the law itself, not to mention applying the law to specific situations
• The tax code has grown to the point that an "expert" consists of a group of people, all specialists in specific sections of the Code.
• As a consequence, businesses tend to shy away from expanding, which means they need fewer employees.
• Profit-sharing is discouraged by the tax code, so employees tend not to share in the success of their hard work -- if you want more money in the hands of a wider base, provide some tax advantages for giving "bonuses" to everyone, not just management
• Too many tax deductions that fulfill social objectives, and/or require the army of "experts" to understand

The first priority should be to remove the barriers put up by government that discourage employment. Look what is happening with Obamacare: companies are, where possible, converting employees part-time to reduce the costs of regulation. Is that what Pelosi wanted? What Reid wanted?

The fact that the Democrats don't see the failure cascade says to me that this is what they want. If they really cared about the unemployed, about getting people who want to work back to work, they would fix the root cause of the problems, not just throw more money at idle people.

I don't blame the idle people -- you can't grow crops on rocks.

[ctdonath2]

Federal revenue never* exceeds 20% of GDP.
We’re at about 19%.
That means the most the Obama can expect to squeeze out of the economy at this point is about $0.15T. We need at least ten times that, leaving the only solution either spending cuts or asset sales.

* - it has a couple times, promptly followed by a serious drop.

[Graewoulf]

Conserve America Party File.

[KeyLargo]

“One of the big problems I see in this discussion is that the people who are against tax increases don’t spell out where the spending problems really are. After reading diatribe after diatribe, I think I’m starting to see the shape of the failure cascade:”

Yes, the author in his article says:

“Rather than expanding programs that didn’t work from the start, and never did, rather than funneling handouts to the poor, rather than financing bloated bureaucracies wedded to their systemic failures, those resources should be channeled to initiatives that create the educational and training opportunities, not to mention the economic conditions and incentives, for people to transcend and overcome poverty.

If you have a persistent ailment, and the high-priced medicine the doctor keeps prescribing doesn’t work, what do you do? Do you just take more as the doctor wants you to, throwing ever more money away, or do you try a different protocol of treatment?

The smart thing to do is try something different. In medicine, treatments that depart from establishment orthodoxy most often cost less and prove successful – for example, the VA hospitals’ rejection of expensive specialty drugs for less costly workhorse drugs that help to render that system so successful.

And so it goes. We could unchain the doors of failed public schools, which lock so many of the poor in cells of failure, and empower families with school choice, at about the half the price of public education. We could lower tax rates and regulatory burdens to create a flow of job-creating capital into poor communities from the private rather than the public sector. We could limit the duration of benefits to disincentivize dependency.”

[marron]

Chambliss needs to be primary’d at the first opportunity.

You shouldn’t need a “pledge” to know what to do about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

[Louis Foxwell]

“Rather than expanding programs that didn’t work from the start, and never did, rather than funneling handouts to the poor, rather than financing bloated bureaucracies wedded to their systemic failures,...

These are precisely the purpose of the programs. They create a permanent underclass and a large stable of handlers all committed to keeping their benefactor party in power.

...those resources should be channeled to initiatives that create the educational and training opportunities, not to mention the economic conditions and incentives, for people to transcend and overcome poverty.

That is, of course, the stated purpose of such programs. Even those laudable goals, however, are leftist doctrine. We need to stand in direct conflict with creating and enlarging entitlement programs.

Never forget, the Constitution does not provide for welfare entitlement. These were always considered the prerogative of the private sector. It was when federal executives determined, as per Marx, that the government IS society that all this changed.

If we are to ever return to Constitutional government and a free society we must disabuse leftists and each other of the notion that they can use government to advance their societal agenda.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

To me, the GOP’s task in all of this ought to be very simple: never vote for a tax increase on anyone. Let the Democrats worry about how to protect their precious spending programs without new taxes. Don’t let them make the GOP look like the big bad meanies who want to push Grandma off the cliff by cutting her Medicare and Social Security. Those are Democrat programs, and they should always be the responsible party for any problems that arise within them. The GOP is the party of low taxes; there’s nothing to be gained from messing with that brand in order to “save” the Democrats’ precious social programs, which will ultimately fail no matter what anyone does.