Posted on 12/04/2017 9:32:59 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
One way to kill a predatory animal is to deny it sustenance. The tax-cut bill passed by the Senate, if it clears a conference with the House and President Trump signs it, may be the first step toward starving the big government beast.
Reporting on the Senate vote early Saturday morning reflected the biases of various media outlets. Predictably, The New York Times and Washington Post characterized the cuts as favoring the "rich," while doing nothing for the poor. Bulletin: Relatively few low-income people pay federal income taxes. They join the 46 percent of Americans who pay no taxes to Washington.
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government, expressed a view opposite that of the major media. CAGW president Thomas Schatz said: "This taxpayer-first bill lowers tax rates on American families; simplifies the tax code; reduces the tax burden on small businesses; and makes American companies more competitive globally."
Two frustrating things about this: One is that too many people expect more from government than they expect from themselves. The Founders never intended government to be a nanny. That it has become one, egged-on by many politicians who preserve their careers by making people dependent on Washington, is why liberty shrinks and debt deepens.
The second and perhaps biggest frustration is that solutions to growing debt exist, but are ignored by many of these same politicians. They fear attacks by liberals who claim conservatives don't care about children, the sick and elderly. One need only consider now-Speaker Paul Ryan's proposal to reform Medicare and Social Security a few years ago. Rather than debate the merits of Ryan's proposal, a liberal group hired an actor who was shown pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair over a cliff.
Google "cut federal spending" and you will see dozens of suggestions. Mostly liberal and some Republican politicians don't want to embrace them because cutting spending would reduce their power over us.
Two of these proposals deserve serious attention. One comes from Downsizing the Federal Government, a website designed to highlight where federal spending goes and how to reform each government department, which proposes shrinking "every federal department by cutting the most harmful programs. This study proposes specific cuts that would reduce federal spending by almost one-quarter and balance the budget in less than a decade."
The philosophy behind their proposal (which is too long to reprint, so look it up) is this: "The federal government has expanded into many areas that should be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals. That expansion is sucking the life out of the private economy and creating a top-down bureaucratic society that is alien to American traditions. So cutting federal spending would enhance civil liberties by dispersing power from Washington."
A similar proposal comes from The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.,-based conservative think tank. Nothing has changed, except more debt, since senior fellow Brian Riedl wrote it seven years ago. It includes empowering state and local governments by transferring programs and power out of Washington to governments closer to the people, consolidating duplicative programs, of which there are many, privatizing the many programs that could be done better by the private sector, elimination of outdated and unnecessary programs and the familiar elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse.
I would add reform Social Security and Medicare, the main drivers of increased spending, which President Trump has hinted Republicans may try next year.
Ignoring solutions and letting the debt increase is irresponsible. With this Congress, as with many before it, sexual harassment isn't the only example of irresponsibility.
Bump!
“The tax-cut bill passed by the Senate, if it clears a conference with the House and President Trump signs it, may be the first step toward starving the big government beast. “
Nope. These tax rate cuts will lead to more revenue.
The starve the beast approach has been proven to not work.
I hope they keep in the adios of the Obamacare Individual mandate.
If enough people adios, it seems the subsidies for the poor have to be increased ?
Starving the Beast is proven now to work? Really?
So based on your one line assertion, we should keep overfunding the Federal Government?
No.
That’s how the Progressives think it has to work, the Feds get all the money they can get out of us by hook or by crook, including tricking us into higher taxes with multiple bait and switches, optimizing the Laffer curve for optimal milking of the public, and even “printing” whatever money they want, to boot.
No.
Having less money for legislators to work with to work with forces them to prioritize, and it make it easier for the people to limit the power of the legislature.
This works at all levels, even the Federal one.
It ought to be especially easy at the Federal level to deal with cuts because there are states and counties and cities where We the People live and operate, and where IF WE WANT we can pick up all the unconstitutional stuff the Feds like to do so much. All they have to do is drop the power trip and let the people do for themselves if we want.
If We the People want those things at the local level we will do it ourselves, funded by local taxes we are able to pay more easily because the Feds did not take the money to use unconstitutionally.
9th and 10th amendments are really important, and we need to legally dis-empower the Feds through those. But, limiting government power is the genius of America, and one of the main ways the Federal government is supposed to be limited is by not giving it too much money.
THAT is Starving the Beast, and it is part of the genius of America, and it works.
A beast will not be starved. It has a credit card. It will only stop feeding when it keels over.
Do Military Industrial Bumbles bounce?
<>The Framers never intended government to be a nanny. That it has become one, egged-on by many politicians who preserve their careers by making people dependent on Washington<>
Of course. The Framers set up a compound democratic/federal republic. The 17th Amendment rendered America a purely democratic republic. Actions, as they say, have consequences.
The senate is an institution without a purpose beyond reelection of its members. Six-year popular terms is a horrid corruption of representation, which is more than addressed through two-year terms in the House. Our horrid fate is certain unless the states are once again returned to the senate.
This is silly. Reduced expenditures by some insignificant percentage isn’t going to “starve” anything. And even that’s not going to happen.
This is the same argument we’ve been hearing for the last 40 years or more. If only government would shrink it’s expenditures, we would move to a promised land of milk and honey. Expenditures overall have never been cut in our lifetimes, and likely never will. There is always a new crisis, a new reason why spending must increase.
Politics is a scam and we’re suckers for playing.
The only way to do this is start either sending these and those that break our laws to the gallows or to the just prison time.
Secondly, start worrying about SPENDING cuts in Washington that resides in the bureaucratic alphabet organizations that need to be ELIMINATED.
Thirdly, none of the above will be done with our present form of democratic government (not republic form) and with the present scale of elected congress critters that could care less about doing what is good for America and its People but only what keeps them in power.
These many heads must be dealt with in kind.
They join the 46 percent of Americans who pay no taxes to Washington.
Fake news like this destroys our credibility and makes us vulnerable to the accusations of the left.
The working poor pay payroll taxes. The employer’s share is taken out of their wages just as surely as the employee’s share.
Technically the employer’s share was never the worker’s money to begin with.
Would the workers get that money if the tax on them was eliminated entirely? Maybe, but probably not. It is a cost to the employer of having employees. Not part of that employee’s compensation. IF the tax goes away his costs go down. The employees pay does not go up.
If that “working poor” person gets everything back that was withheld from his pay then he pays no taxes to Washington DC.
46% of people pay nothing.
It is very easy to compare the gross of an independent contractor, a W2 employee (like me who gets no benies) and an employee with benies.
Clearly, the employer’s share of payroll taxes is a cost of the employee to the employer and clearly it is the employee’s money.
The Employer’s share is FAKE “fair share”. It was specifically designed that way in 1964-65 to get it passed in Congress. It would never have passed congress without the FAKE appearance that it is not coming out of the employee’s real gross.
Where the payroll tax goes if it were eliminated for the working poor depends totally on how the legislation is worded. I suggest it go to the worker.
Currently working poor have 7.65% of their wages withheld plus the employers share that is purposely gimmicked to be hid from the employee. And the working poor never get a refund. Remember, that money does not go into Al Gore’s lock box. It goes into the same pot as the income tax and is no different than the income tax, except in Mr Roger’s land of Make-Believe.
Incidentally, the upper middle class pay only 1.45% payroll tax on most of their income in contrast to 7.65% for the working poor.
>46% of people pay nothing.
And, IIRC, ~5% get $$$ they never earned (aka EITC. Boy do I hope that dies a quick death).
Lastly, everyone loves to talk about the ‘income tax’. Not ONLY do those that ‘work’ utilize govt (say, like those under-the-table\’poor’ and...RETIRED).
I would counter the ‘poor’ utilize MORE govt than the rest (more police, more services...more NANNY), then retired (ala MediXYZ)...on up the economic ladder.
In 1978, the “starve the beast” hypothesis was a reasonable one.
It is beyond question now, 39 years later, that it is a complete and utter failure, that it is cynical and dishonest to boot, and that “tax cuts” before program cuts simply lead to more borrowing, more money printing, and eventually to complete collapse.
Starving the beast is a failed strategy. It failed repeatedly. There is no reason to believe it will work any better in the future.
Cal Thomas is an ancient neocon who reflects the worst of Bush era conservatism. He needs to retire.
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