That's a myth. A complete myth. The government first taxes whatever it can get away with and then thinks what to do with it. Once they have the money, they will find a need for it. For example at the end of Clinton's term we had a "surplus". What really is a surplus ? It's simply what the govt had overtaxed. Since the govt had more money than they needed, were they going to return it ? Hell no. If algore was elected, he would have identified "underfunded" programs to spend the money on, and then raised taxes on top of that.
And today they have gone two steps further. They are on a spending binge like never before without regard to what they have or what they can get in the short term through taxation. The little clip below from the immortal BBC show 'Yes Minister', summarizes it perfectly. One of the characters is the chief bureaucrat who explains to the PM what taxation is about.
Totally agree with much of your comment. As for the “Clinton surplus”. It was as much a case of over taxation as it was the fact that the Republicans refused to allow him to spend freely. It’s amazing how fast you turn red ink into black when you quit pissing away money on giveaways and frivolous social programs. The tax coffers filling with capital gains revenues from the stock market bubble helped as well.