During his Saturday radio address, President George W. Bush pledged to spend nearly $48 billion more to expand Department of Education programs. I don’t know about you, but as April 15 looms on the horizon and my taxman tells me I’m going to take another beating this year, I find this figure distressing and insulting.
In his address, Mr. Bush even said, in essence, that “money won’t fix the problems we have with our schools entirely.”
Well, no, it won’t — indeed, it hasn’t — but we’re going to spend more anyway, sans real reform of old, broken programs and ideas that have, for decades, proven expensive and fruitless.
What’s wrong with this picture? For one thing, it wasn’t long ago that Republicans were advocating closing down the federal Department of Education altogether. What has happened to that idea?
Come to think of it, what happened to the whole Republican Party platform of “less government (and cheaper government) is better government?”
I’ve no doubt Mr. Bush is sincere in his desire to truly reform education and perhaps bring it back down to the level of local control. He says he still believes in that principle, but pushing for $48 billion more in “federal spending” on education doesn’t do much to reduce the size of a bureaucracy the administration already claims doesn’t work very well.
Worse, there is no constitutional provision calling for the creation or expansion of this kind of government program. There are no constitutional provisions calling for spending tax money on virtually everything in the federal budget. Yet, it has swollen to $2 trillion this fiscal year. It has swollen every single budget year for as far back as I can find statistics for.
As the federal budget has swollen, tax burdens have increased as well. That’s a disturbing, clear pattern to me. It isn’t rocket science.
The fact is, we don’t need “tax reform,” we need “bureaucracy reform.” As in, “close ’em down.” If we just “close ’em down,” we’ll get our tax burden reduced automatically because fewer tax dollars will be needed to support a slimmer federal government.
Some lawmakers have publicly said recently that tax breaks are definitely needed. “We’re overdue for them,” they say.
Yet, they make this “revelation” only in the context of refunding surplus tax money. They don’t say anything about cutting back or eliminating all the reasons why the U.S. tax burden is historically high in the first place.
Unless these bureaucracies go away, any sort of “tax relief” is going to be temporary because, unless these bureaucracies go away, politicians will continue to use them to “buy off” the votes of their constituencies by promising them more largess.
If you honestly don’t believe politicians use the federal treasury to buy loyalty, consider the outpouring of outrage if one of them would ever have the guts to suggest phasing out Social Security, education funding, welfare payments or disability checks. Hell, lawmakers don’t even have the intestinal fortitude to shut off funding for the National Endowment of the Arts — and this is just a measly $100 million or so annually.
Mr. Bush has said he is willing to push a $1.6 trillion tax cut spread out over 10 years based on the amount of expected surplus of tax revenues over the next decade. What if those revenues don’t materialize? What then — will the taxes be re-imposed?
That’s a big “10-4,” good buddy.
They’ll have to be; if the agencies and bureaucracies don’t go away, the tax increases will return because, gee whiz, “we have to pay for all these things. …”
Look here, Sparky, I’m not some kind of ogre. I could go for working, say, until the middle of February every year to pay off my tax obligations. That way, there would still be some funding for so-called “social safety net” programs that would be able to help the truly downtrodden people get back on their feet or live their lives.
There would also be funding for constitutional federal obligations, such as defense, building roads and post offices and a few other duties.
But I am adamantly opposed to working until late May or early June every single year just to earn enough money to pay my taxes. That’s as obscene as making Rosie O’Donnell a Rockette.
So Mr. Bush, do us all a favor — quit tinkering with the tax code “around the edges.” Quit enticing us with promises to cut surplus federal taxes. Give us some real relief — cut the agencies that suck up all our tax money. If you don’t have the votes in Congress, then use your veto to dismiss bills that prop up these agencies with more money. There’s the old executive order, too. Get some guts; we’re drowning out here.
If our over-regulated, over-taxed burdens went away, not only would this economy of ours take off like reruns of Seinfeld, but you’d be as popular as Britney Spears in a Turkish prison.
