Sleight of hand. Government wants to raise taxes because it wants to increase the reach of government. Repubs oppose the increase of taxes because they seek to limit the reach of government. Since explaining the whole notion of classic liberalism and limited government is complicated, the whole argument winds up being about tax cuts.
I’ve often made the comment myself that Repubs have to make the whole limited-government argument, they have to make the whole classic liberal case again and again, they can’t rely on some kind of short-hand argument about tax cuts, because half the people in America don’t pay income tax anyway, and aren’t going to get it.
Dems want to extend the reach of government into every aspect of your life, and keep jacking tax rates to pay for it even though raising taxes (and micromanaging the economy) suffocates the economy and pushes people out of work thus creating more poor people as you well should know.
If we push back on taxes, they say, what, you don’t like poor people? Or they’ll add program after program and if you push back on taxes they’ll threaten to lay off police and teachers. What, you don’t like teachers? No, we want to roll back the other programs that have extended the reach of government where it doesn’t belong.
Sleight of hand. You oppose running a $4 trillion dollar budget with $2 trillion in income. What, you don’t like poor people? What, are you a radical libertarian who doesn’t pay his taxes? We oppose looting social security and Dems accuse us of hating old people. Its a con game.
I agree with you that there is a constant battle for balance, with the left trying to use the poor to overextend government, and the right trying to restore balance.
But there is some in the GOP, which I believe the article was addressing which claim that government has no business helping the poor. The scriptures in the article and the scriptures I posted indicate that is indeed a proper governmental role. It does not negate the mandate for individuals to help the poor. The mandate to government is in addition to the individual mandate and the church mandate.