printHow 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.
“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.”
When did you join Alice and I in Wonderland?
I’m with you all the way. I hope McCain will reform, but I don’t expect it.
If we dismantle the IRS, how will we pay for guarding the borders? Are you a supporter of the Fair Tax? I am, but you’re more economically savvy than I and I thought I should get your opinion.
“But since I have been called a Pollyanna,” My comment was in regard to “Wonderland” being the place of satire wherein the reigning elites make their own definitions (It is because I say it is) If a politician should offer to abolish the IRS, bring back the troops, close the DOE. We would have to be in Wonderland because we sure as h-ll ain’t in the U.S. anymore. It was a left hand comment, not meant to be considered more than a little cynical humor at the impossibility of good responsible government.
Overhaul the tax system? Have government voluntarily give up their hammer to control the people? Sounds simple. The greatest ideas usually are. Great ideas come from great people. Unfortunately the ideas actually put into motion are from those who are less than great. Our “public servants”.
If you will permit me to join Alice and the both of you in Wonderland for a moment, I would point out that the deal killer for both the FairTax and the present silliness are the myriad of exemptions, deductions, and credits. If you could get a clean, straight rate under both proposals first, the debate would be much more serious. I would argue that the IRS as it presently exists would be unnecessary under either hypothetical straight rate schematic.
It’s a shame all of this has to be hypothetical and far from the political possibilities we have within “the Age of the Idiot,” isn’t it? Ultimately, I fear that we are headed toward the European model of both a VAT and the onerous “progressive” income tax.
Your welcome to join Alice and I in Wonderland as long as you remember that our common refrain is “I want to go home” Home, where politicians don’t lie all the time, home, where a dollar is worth a dollar, home, where there is security. Home, where… Ok, I see where the Mad Hatter, AKA Chairman Ben S. Bernanke just refilled the tea cups with 600 Trillion more of Bush’s stimulus. Another drunken ball, oh! brawl. Boy do I want to go home, but; someone said, “You never can go home again.” I think it was O’Bama.