(Illustration by Greg Groesch, The Washington Times)Even as the recent debt-ceiling and quasi-shutdown agreement was on its way to the White House, congressional liberals already were renewing their quest for higher taxes.
"I am hopeful we can now work together in a budget conference toward a balanced and bipartisan deal," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, in formally requesting negotiations with the House.
This, of course, is the left's code for demanding higher tax revenues in any plan that reduces spending. It's the same disingenuous language they used leading up to January's "fiscal cliff" resolution, which increased both taxes and spending. A corollary this time is raising taxes to offset relief from the automatic sequestration cuts written in law — the kind of proposal that used to be called "tax and spend."
The "balanced" approach might sound good but, in fact, it's a distraction from the real source of all the government's fiscal problems.
To dispose of the obvious first: President Obama and congressional liberals — whose crowning legislative achievement commandeers what's left of the nongovernment health care sector (government already controls nearly half of all medical spending) — have no intention of slowing the growth of government. They just want more spending, chased by higher taxes.
More importantly, though, the spending-cut and tax-increase formulation rests on the cultivated fallacy that deficits are the central fiscal policy issue — and that spending and taxes are just mirror-image means of reducing them. This view ignores the real cause-and-effect of government budgeting: Deficits are a symptom of excessive government spending, and spending restraint is the only cure.
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