How serious are Republicans about revolutionary cuts in state spending? John McCain serious.
McCain’s idea of “spending cuts,” just articulated to Fox News’ Shepard Smith, is cutting National Public Radio loose, and doing away with earmarks. I doubt these will cover a day’s interest payment on the national debt.
McCain’s notion of heeding the voter: securing the borders and reforming, not repealing, ObamaCare. Remind me again why movement conservatives betrayed J. D. Hayworth, who ought to have beaten Senator John McCain in the Arizona GOP primary.
Contrast McCain’s worse-than-futile slashes to the state with the reductions the British have begun to make.
BBC News: “Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts for decades, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.”
A “19% average cuts to departmental budgets,” as well cutting “higher education spending by 40%, flood defences by 15% and sport England and UK Sport by 30%”—this is better than increasing spending as we are. Of course, price controls, such as on rail fares, are being tinkered with, namely “allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012.”
No doubt, certain cuts in the UK are an illusion, to be replaced by other, slightly modified programs. But again: better to fire 500,000 state workers than to hire 1.4 million census stalkers.
Prick up your ears when you hear promises to dismantle the IRS, the Department of Education, and to recall ALL troops, and the installations erected to satisfy their needs, from the over 100 countries in which they are stationed. That’ll be a modest beginning.
UPDATED: As to “Fair Tax,” campaigned for by the likes of Mike Huckabee and liberventionist Neal Boortz. When these two are right, it is only by accident. So you’re safe opposing most of their pet issues. I don’t like the “Fair Tax.” Granted, a tax on consumption is only an indirect tax on income.
A: We have to cut spending. You can’t get rid of the income tax if you don’t get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you’d have about as much revenue as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn’t all that bad 10 years ago. There are sources of revenues other than the income tax. You have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there’s still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn’t have it.
Q: But if you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?
A: A lot.
Q: Over a trillion dollars.
A: That’s good.
But since I have been called a Pollyanna, let me say this: the 16th is “The Number of The Beast”; it needs to be abolished. Taxation is immoral and naturally illicit. But given that, realistically, the state will not so do, a a flat, low tax is a pragmatic solution. Let the poor set the rate. The Russians have a low flat tax. As Dan Mitchell reports, “The former communists running Russia apparently understand tax policy better than the buffoons in charge of U.S. tax policy. Not only does Russia have a 13 percent flat tax, but the government has just announced it will eliminate the capital gains taxA pure flat tax would preclude any capital gains tax.
The Fair Tax our local buffoons propose is prohibitive.