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 One Person's Cost is Another's Investment
* The bulk of major bills being introduce in the House have to
do with taxes. Income, Marriage, Estate, Capitol Gains, Corporate, Outside Income for Seniors.
You name it, we tax it.
* The Democrats can’t outbid the Republicans on tax cuts. Republicans will take a Democratic
proposal and add to it. But here’s what the Dems can do: They can reorient the discussion so
that the Republican-sponsored cuts are described as “costs” to the government.
* We’ve had this debate before, but it bears repeating: We work. We earn money. The government
takes some percentage of our money to run its operations. That action is called a tax.
* If government takes less in taxes we get to keep more of our money. This is called a “tax cut”
but it should be called a “workers’ benefit.”
* The Democrats are successfully recasting the issue in terms which suggest that once a tax has
been applied, that money belongs to the government forever and the government will decide if it
will every allow us to get it back.
* So, rather than discussing tax cuts in terms of how much that reduction will cost the
government, they should be discussed in terms of how much they will benefit working Americans.
* Think about the nature of the tax debates and how different they would be if we simply adopted
the phrase “Benefit to Workers” and its variants instead of “cost to the government.”
* I’m not picking on the Associated Press here, but this is how they describe the proposal to ease
the Marriage Penalty in a story this morning:
“MARRIAGE PENALTY: Increasing the 15 percent tax bracket for married couples from
$41,200 to $49,300 and boosting the standard deduction for married couples from $6,900 to
$8,300. Cost: About $100 billion over five years, according to sponsors.”
* Read that again, but this time aloud, and change the word “Cost” to the words “Benefit to
Workers.” Think that might have made a difference at the AFL-CIO meetings in Florida last week?
* Rather than having arguments over how much tax relief would cost the government, we should
be having spirited discussions over where the government will cut duplication and waste to ensure
the money we ARE sending to Washington is being spent wisely – or at least not foolishly.
* Of course, if we sent management consultants into federal agencies to find new efficiencies and
eliminate duplication, the story would be cast solely in terms of how many government employees
were losing their jobs, not how much it was benefiting workers.
* It is part of the Orwellian nature of Washington verbiage that a decrease in taxes is a “cost”
while an increase in taxes is an “investment.”
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