Vote buying, that is bribing the voters to vote the way you want, is a very old American tradition. Social Security is one big modern example. The Roman Empire worked so long as Rome could afford huge "government contracts" for "services" and to operate their "social welfare" system. The list is endless.
If you leave this potent political weapon in the sole hands of the Left you fight with your strong arm tied behind your back. The Right in the USA has been so dumb for so long that the Right would raise the money and the Left would use the money raised for the "public good" by the Right to buy votes for the Left! How incredibly stupid! We HAVE to win this thing!!
I understand all that already. The meta-problem (if you will) is that the political problem is described in terms of the following alternatives: a small additional bit of socialism to bribe the masses (a la No Child Left Behind, for example), versus a large dollop of socialism to bribe the masses (a la Social Security, WPA, etc.).
But no matter, the ultimate effect is the same, only the slope of the function with time is different. Your choice as posed offers the alternatives of totalitarian socialism by next Tuesday or the following Wednesday, so the argument goes, well, the rate associated with the following Wednesday would of course be the obvious choice!
Are you familiar with the analogy of the frogs being slowly cooked in a pot of increasingly hot water? That is the view of conservatives with respect to any agenda involving proposed increases of any sort for taxation, spending, and the concurrent restrictions on rights and property ownership. The choice you offer is illusory if the objective is to stop, not merely to slow down, incremental socialism.