Tom Blackburn: Goldilocks wants her tax break: "Getting a politician to vote for a tax cut is about as hard as getting one to say a few words to the audience. Congress extended for another two years the 15 percent tax rate on dividends and capital gains. That is less than most wage earners are taxed on wages. That same Congress nearly came to blows over immigration, designed a drug benefit for seniors that only drug and insurance companies could love and - most germane to this discussion - still hasn't devised a clear, clean way to pay for the nation-building it supinely applauds.
The intermittent holy-cow-it-still-costs-money special appropriations for Iraq are not serious bookkeeping. They are cookouts for well-connected members of Congress to roast up more pork for favored constituents.
Displaying alarm but no panic, Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation noted that such fun and games increased federal spending by 45 percent in the Republican Era. In an essay in the D.C. Examiner, he computed that within 10 years it will take a $7,000-per-household tax increase to balance the budget.
Get control of spending, Mr. Riedl urges. Put a lid on entitlement spending like Social Security. And, finally, he says, make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
That last point is odd. To avoid having to raise taxes in the future, they should keep taxes low now? See, I told you they make things complicated. . ."
If your head isn't hurting too badly, you can find the rest here.
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