Posted on 10/18/2010 2:27:21 PM PDT by curiosity
So it turns out that the cure for “epistemic closure” is great quantities of crystal meth. The things you learn from Grover Norquist.
In case you missed it, Norquist came down like a runaway gravel truck on Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, a favorite around these parts. Governor Daniels’s offense was declaring himself open to the possibility that a value-added tax might be an acceptable part of a wide-ranging reform of the federal tax system. Norquist replied, in a Politico interview:
“This is outside the bounds of acceptable modern Republican thought, and it is only the zone of extremely left-wing Democrats who publicly talk about those things because all Democrats pretending to be moderates wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot poll. Absent some explanation, such as large quantities of crystal meth, this is disqualifying. This is beyond the pale.”
Here’s the problem: The deficit is, by my always-suspect English-major math, about 36.3 percent of federal spending ($1.29 trillion deficit out of $3.55 trillion spending). For comparison: Defense accounts for about 18 percent of federal spending. So you could cut out the entire national-security budget, and another Pentagon-sized chunk of non-military spending, and not quite close that deficit. You could cut the Pentagon to $0.00 and eliminate Social Security entirely and just barely get there.
Even great heaping quantities of crystal meth would not be enough to convince me that is going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong: In a perfect world, Exchequer would love to see the budget balanced and some tax cuts enabled through spending reductions alone. Exchequer would also like to be dating Marisa Miller, driving a Morgan Aero, and running a four-minute mile, developments that are about as plausible as Congress’s cutting 36.3 percent of federal spending. Not going to happen.
So, our choices are this: 1. Hold out for the best-case scenario, in which a newly elected Speaker Boehner gives President Obama the complete works of Milton Friedman and everybody agrees to cutting federal spending by more than a third. 2. Keep running deficits and piling up debt. 3. Raise taxes. My preferences, in order, go: 1, 3, 2. And No. 2 is not really acceptable.
Like it or not, taxes are going up: If not today, then in the near future. Even once the deficit is under control, that debt is still going to have to be paid down, lest debt service alone overwhelm the federal budget, necessitating even more tax hikes. If Grover Norquist thinks there’s a tax-free way out of this mess that is both politically and economically realistic, he is living in a fantasy. There’s an old joke that goes: Neurotics build castles in the sky; psychotics live in them. And Grover Norquist seeks tax protection for them.
Norquist’s outfit, Americans for Tax Reform, does a lot of good things. (And so has Grover Norquist, over the years.) But here’s how it describes itself:
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle.
That’s not a campaign against Big Government — it’s a campaign against math. As ye spend, so shall ye tax. Denying that is not a principle — it’s a tantrum. ATR’s pledge reads:
“I _____ pledge to the taxpayers of the __________ district, of the state of __________, and to all the people of this state, that I will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
And here is how it should read:
“I _____ pledge to the taxpayers of the __________ district, of the state of __________, and to all the people of this state, that I will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase spending.”
Spending is the issue, not taxes. Spending is the virus, taxes are the symptom. Norquistism, by focusing on the taxing side of the ledger rather than on the spending side, has for decades enabled Republican spending shenanigans of the sort that helped put the party in the minority and ruined its reputation for fiscal sobriety; it is of a piece with naïve supply-siderism. The Bush-era deficits, and the subsequent discrediting of Republicans’ fiscal conservatism, are the product.
Give me the grown-up despair of Mitch Daniels any day over the happy-talk daydream that says we’re getting out of this mess without paying for it.
As such, we should be seaching for ways in which we can reform our tax code to minimize deadweight loss that necessarily comes with increased taxes, which are a given.
The VAT or other consumption-type taxes are the only answer.
Raising taxes will hurt the economy, revenue could actually go down.
I for one would hope this government goes bankrupt.
Tell the government to STFU
We are not serfs.
No...
CUT Spending
We don’t need higher taxes...we need more tax payers.
More people making more money who then pay taxes.
All the fricking gov't agencies and bureaucracies that should be abolished or consolidated and this idiot wants to talk about another tax.
The only way you fix the tax mess is going to either the Fair Tax or Flat Tax. The current system only works for the super poor or the super rich
Both Norquist and Daniels are Liberal RINOs...Daniels even worse. Then again, no surprise that Daniels wants a VAT...he sold the taxpayer built Indian Tollroad to a foreign company....people who are Liberal Globalists like Daniels love higher taxes
Conservatives MUST come to terms with the fact that the ballot box can not longer save us.
That we are Europe II.
That conservative politics are dead.
The VAT is the road to serfdom.
It is the Holy Grail for progressives. No conservative should have anything to do with it.
We have the example of Europe on the VAT and that should tell people everything they need to know. You cannot kill the beast by feeding it our lifeblood.
The VAT allows the government to illegally confiscate at all stages of production. It is a vile and evil thing and I hope all FReepers will fight it to the death.
Within a couple of years, we can balance the budget without raising taxes if we just phase out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, if we do so over a three-five year period, current recipients will have the time they will need to make other arrangements.
If we end the welfare state, taxes don't have to be increased.
The underling premise of both the article and your post is that tax rates and revenue are directly proportional. People who believe this are not even worth talking to regarding taxation and budget policy.
Why doesn’t McDonald’s or Burger King raise their price for a Big Mac or Whopper? Because those who set the prices believe that if they did so revenues will drop. Both the price-revenue curve and the taxrate-revenue curve intersect the x-axis twice. Somewhere on that curve their exists at least one maximum. It’s called calculus - look it up.
Their is a maximum amount of tax revenue that can be taken out of an economy. If spending is above that maximum, changing tax rates can NEVER close the gap. Perhaps Mitch Daniels is a grown up, perhaps Santa Claus can bring him some math skills for Christmas.
Grover Norquist is a big stooge for CAIR and Islam. F him.
Is not Norquist married to a Muslim woman and is not Norquist a regular apologist for the Muslims?
We need to get rid of both Norquist and Daniels for disparate reasons.
Both of them offend conservative sensibilities.
Thank TV. TV controls the masses. Norquist is already sharia compliant with his muslim wife and Saudi allowence.
Fox’s largest individual shareholder is Prince Al Waleed who may be ABC and CNN’s biggest shareholder as well.
ALL TV is pro elite, pro islam and the sheep who watch enable and empower the elites. Keep watching sheep. Your monthly cable bill makes all the networks and TV rich plus keeps you a serf.
Norquist is CAIR and the Saudis boy because of hajib wife. He is also on the NRA’s board. The guy is pure scum. Another Rove or Newt.
Thank you. You will never balance this budget by raising taxes, you will actually reduce revenue because you will kill an already struggling economy.
You balance this budget by expanding the economy, and by getting the government out of things it doesn't belong in. You need more taxpayers and more prosperous taxpayers. And a more modest government.
I keep saying that a focused determination to become energy independent, eliminating bureaucratic impediments to energy development and generally encouraging homegrown energy projects of every kind, will turn this economy around on a dime. We send half a trillion a year out of the country buying fuel, putting other countries' people to work and funding their national budgets. Spend that money here, putting our people to work and funding our tax base, you'll turn this country around so fast you'll get whiplash.
I suspect there will be more screaming from the likes of Norquist when he gets ousted from the conservatives than when super-liberals get ousted from their political positions.
The tea party has a lot of work ahead.
We have only begun to fight!!!!!
Poppycock. If tax rate are raised, the depressing effect on economic activity is likely to bankrupt us even faster.
But suppose the federal government can find a way to extract more money without choking off economic growth. What makes anyone think the additional revenues will be used to reduce the deficit or pay down the debt?
The truth is, no amount of tax revenue can ever satisfy the statists. They will always spend whatever they take in, and more.
The VAT or other consumption-type taxes are the only answer.
If VAT is the answer, it was a stupid question.
The only sure answer to the federal deficit is drastic reductions in spending.
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