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Mail
Magazine 24
Grover's
Missing Piece
by Michael Snyder
For
years, Grover Norquist and
Republicans have tried "starving the beast" of the federal government
by capping taxes. While they've been highly successful at preventing
tax
increases, they have been less effective at addressing one problematic
aspect
of fiscal policy: the ability of the Federal Reserve and Treasury to
borrow
more and more to finance massive spending, as they have done under the
Bush and
Obama administrations. It's simple: Borrowing today means a higher tax
burden
tomorrow when the debt comes due. True fiscal responsibility, then,
requires us
to curb spending in addition to limiting tax rates.
Imagine
if instead of pledging not
to raise taxes, all those politicians had pledged not to raise
spending. It's
unlikely the United States would be facing massive tax increases as
part of the
so-called fiscal cliff. That's why it's important to do for spending
what
Norquist has done for taxes: create a means for voters to hold elected
officials accountable when they break campaign promises of fiscal
responsibility.
It's
hard to imagine a better time
to secure such a pledge from elected officials. Given our ever-mounting
debt,
it is incumbent on all of us who care about the future prosperity of
this
country to reexamine the completeness of Norquist's approach. We have
to look
at more than the tax side of the equation.
The
American people are finally
realizing that federal spending is way beyond the point of
sustainability, and
the moment is ripe to change the direction of the political discourse.
A
Rasmussen poll from Monday found that "nearly half (48%) of likely U.S.
voters now believe it is necessary to significantly reduce the cost of
entitlement programs and military spending to reduce the long-term
federal
deficit." Now is the time to shift the focus from which taxes we can
lower
(or not raise) to what spending we can cut.
My
claim is a simple one: Spending
more than you take in is dangerous because that money ultimately has to
come
from somewhere. When a government operates on an unbalanced budget, the
tax
burden is passed not only on to future generations but also onto our
own,
diminishing our opportunities through indirect taxation, such as higher
interest rates and inflation.
Both
parties have failed in this
regard. We've seen Medicare Part D under Bush, the Affordable Care Act
under
Obama, and bank and auto bailouts combined with wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan
under both presidents.
It's
time for all of us to take our
hands out of the cookie jar. Having the Pentagon spending billions
running
grocery stores doesn't make the U.S. strong on defense. And keeping the
retirement age indefinitely at 65, even as Americans are leading longer
and
healthier lives, doesn't make us compassionate. Both mean that we're
fattening
up at the expense of our grandkids' standard of living.
Fortunately,
some in Washington are
taking aim at our political sacred cows. Doug Collins,
representative-elect
from Georgia, and Ted Cruz, senator-elect from Texas, both pledged to
voters
this cycle that they consider all items in the budget eligible for
reduction.
By signing the Reject the Debt pledge in addition to the
taxpayers-protection
pledge, they have promised to vote against not only tax increases now
but also
spending increases that would amount to future tax burdens.
As
one columnist recently wrote,
"From now on, any politician who signs the anti-tax pledge without also
signing the anti-debt pledge can be dismissed as a complete hypocrite."
The companion to Norquist's no-tax pledge is the Reject the Debt
pledge.
Elected officials need to sign both.
Source:
familysecuritymatters.org
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