The only reason we may have achieved a balanced budget is because it
sneaked up on the obsessive-compulsive spenders in Washington D.C. They
simply did not see it coming. President Ronald Reagan predicted we would
grow our way out of budgetary deficits, but liberals did not believe
him.
No one is more surprised than Bill Clinton. There is no way he would
have allowed this to happen if he had not been caught off-guard.
But he is quickly moving to rectify what liberals view as a
repulsive, nigh unforgivable mistake: allowing revenues to overtake
spending. His goal is to eliminate even the possibility of a surplus,
not only for the next fiscal year, but for years to come. He will do
this by launching new programs, making new spending commitments, and
adding new entitlements.
The reaction of liberals to the idea of a tax cut has been most
revealing. They are deeply offended by the noxious thought that,
perhaps, maybe, a fourth of the “surplus” should be returned to the
people who actually earned the money and who are being seriously
overcharged for government services rendered.
In various rants over the past few weeks, Bill Clinton said that
Republicans would “squander the surplus on a short-sighted,
irresponsible, over-large tax plan.” He was just getting warmed up. He
said tax refunds would force “huge cuts in education, agriculture, the
environment, defense, biomedical research … indeed, everything we are
doing to strengthen our country. … It would cause us to revert to the
dark old days of huge deficits, high interest rates, low economic growth
and stagnation.” He said that the proposed reduction in taxation
discriminates against women and endangers the future of our children.
This overheated rhetoric soars high above the routine lying we have
come to expect from political hacks, even this one. It is a frothy and
hysterical overreaction that transcends the demagogic and suggests the
pathological. One might well have a policy difference over taxes, but to
prophesize Armageddon, the end of the world as we know it, if taxes are
cut, reflects either an inner world of delusions or an operative view of
Americans as gullible dupes and simpletons.
It has been said before and bears repeating: If an infinite number of
Democrats sat before an infinite number of word processors for an
infinite period of time, sooner or later, one of them would type out the
sentence, “A budget may be balanced by reducing spending.”
However, nothing would change. I simply postulate they would type out
the message. I am not prepared to say they would understand what they
had written, no matter what infinities are assumed.
It must be conceded that this impairment might be the result of some
sort of chemical imbalance — or some genetic misfortune. For this
reason, perhaps we should not be too quick to judge. Perhaps we should
simply remove these hapless people from the temptations for which they
have no biological defenses.
Whatever the reason, nurture or nature, it is an established fact
that liberals are addictively drawn to every expansion of government
power, every new tax, every piece of pork, every boondoggle, every new
program, every old program and every pay raise and new amenity for
themselves, their clients and their cronies.
To be fair, there is another way of explaining the aversion of
liberals to any reduction in taxes and spending. Think of the government
as a business, with millions of employees who equate big government with
job security and benefits. The goal of this business, as with any
business, is to increase revenues and expand the customer base. Taxes
are viewed as revenues, the higher the better; those who depend on
government are customers, the more the merrier. Spending is considered
an investment.
Naturally, advertising is important to support the business. Those
who produce wealth must be made to feel guilty for their success and
less inclined to protest when it is taken from them; and those who
receive government benefits and favors must be made to feel that they
have a right to the fruit off someone else’s tree. And everyone must be
convinced that the constitutional limitations on the size and power of
government are old-fashioned and outmoded.
It takes a lot of creative, brain-bending advertising to induce these
mindsets.
However, when the propaganda is successful, the scam systematically
proceeds with its massive “redistribution of wealth,” not as is commonly
believed, from one citizen to another, but from all citizens to the
government.
Liberals are wannabe elites in a socialist America. Once they get us
to a point where the majority of citizens are parasitically attached to
big government programs and largess, all will be lost. We will no longer
be able to correct the government and change course via the ballot box.
We are almost there.
