We're On Our Own

There he goes again.

Fareed Zakaria says Raise My Taxes, Mr. President! Alright, that's not really fair. I have no idea whether Mr. Zakaria ever asked to raise his taxes before.

But it is inevitable that a person who professes to believe that only the failure of the government to collect sufficient money is responsible for the deficit will eventually call for increased taxation. And Mr. Zakaria is just such a person:

The Bush tax cuts remain the single largest cause of America’s structural deficit—that is, the deficit not caused by the collapse in tax revenues when the economy goes into recession.

Emphasis added. No mention of spending. It doesn't seem to contribute to the deficit in Mr. Zakaria's world. Since spending is not responsible for the deficit, why reduce it? The only possible cure is more taxation.

But, as previously argued in this space, no one who demands that his taxes be increased really means it. What they mean is they want to increase my taxes, not theirs, because they are and always have been free to increase their contribution to the government voluntarily. And voluntarily increasing their contribution to the government is precisely what they are supposedly calling for.

I agree with Zakaria on one point, though. He says conservatives "thought the Bush tax cuts would force us to shrink the government. But with Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, did reduced taxes cause reduced spending? No, they led to ever-increasing borrowing and a ballooning deficit."

He's right, and the same thing happened under Reagan. Nothing and no one can "force us to shrink the government."

We have to do it ourselves. By ourselves, somehow, because the recent analysis on Rasmussen indicates that our politicians aren't going to do it for us.