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Is George Voinovich Right? Phil BrennanThis might sound a little like heresy for a confirmed Bush supporter, but I have to admit that in sticking to his guns on limiting a tax cut to $350 billion, Ohio's staunch Republican George Voinovich makes a darn good case for his opposition to the president’s request for a larger cut of $550 billion. I'm not saying that the president is wrong in pushing for the larger figure, but Voinovich, a longtime enemy of deficit spending who gained a reputation in his native state as a dedicated deficit hawk, talks common sense, a most uncommon virtue in Washington. While favoring the smaller tax cut, Voinovich, for example, warns that since the federal government is running at a whopping deficit, it will have to make up for the loss of income occasioned by the cut by borrowing. He compares this to a company that is losing money borrowing money to give a dividend to its shareholders. There's a bankruptcy waiting at the end of that road. Like the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Iowa's plain-spoken Sen. Charles Grassley, Voinovich insists that the way to cover the loss of income caused by a tax cut is for the federal government to slash its bloated spending programs. This, of course, is heresy to Democrats and their fellow socialists, who all but dispute President Bush's assertion that the money torn from the pockets of taxpayers is their money, not the government's. To those denizens of the socialist swamp, the money may be the citizens' money, but they can't be trusted to spend it on essential things, such as paying for abortion in the armed services, ladling out funds to the baby killers at Planned Parenthood, sending foreign aid to nations that spit in our faces at the drop of a hat, or funding condoms for kids programs for America's public schools. Grassley says that making such cuts as corporate welfare and/or unnecessary government programs can be extremely difficult to achieve in the current pork-hungry and special interest-prone congressional climate – a tired old excuse that people with far less sense than Charles Grassley trot out when anyone dares to suggest that the feds should rein in their obsessive spendthriftery. The fact is, unless the Congress grabs hold of the purse strings and starts getting rid of spending programs that have no right to exist under the Constitution of the United States, an unmanageable inflation followed by eventual national bankruptcy will become inevitable. Moreover, while he's at it, Voinovich brings up the most talked about but never acted upon subject of tax reform. It is long past time for the Congress to get rid of the current tax code and adopt either a flat tax or a national sales tax. In Russia, of all places, they have a flat tax and their tax receipts have gone through the roof. Unfortunately, there seem to be too many people suckling at the income tax mammaries who have the clout to prevent any attempts to stem the flow of the milk of human tax dollars into their coffers. Now, in defense of the president's tax cut proposals, it should be pointed out that putting more money in taxpayers' pockets boosts the economy, creates jobs and does all sorts of other good stuff that results in an increase in the number of tax dollars pouring into the U.S. Treasury. It happened as a result of President Kennedy's tax cuts and it happened as a result of President Reagan's tax cut. And it's happened in Russia. The president, like Voinovich and Grassley, has also called on Congress to get a grip on its nonessential spending, which continues to be out of control. Says the Cato Institute's Director of Fiscal Policy Studies Chris Edwards: "Bold fiscal reforms need to be pursued at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The administration is under the shortsighted illusion that it can have bigger government in the selected areas it wants, such as defense, agriculture, education, and Medicare prescription drugs, but have tight limits on spending elsewhere. But that strategy leads to larger government everywhere because Congress is spurred to demand higher spending for all its favorite programs." A lot of people have recognized that spending tax dollars – your money – is an addiction that strikes the folks on Capitol Hill shortly after they get there. Here, from Citizens Against Government Waste's annual Pig Book, are some sorry examples of where your tax dollars go:
According to Tom Schatz, who heads Citizens Against Government Waste, the president and budget director Mitch Daniels have acted to root out and cut waste. They have, he wrote, implemented new performance standards for federal programs and bureaucrats, challenged congressional pork projects, subjected the Government Printing Office to competition, and cut the federal government's oversized car fleet. But, wrote Schatz, "these efforts, while commendable, are small potatoes; the billions in duplication, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement wasted by virtually every agency and program year after year remain unchallenged." Here are his recommendations to get at the spending mania problem:
If these proposals were adopted, an even bigger tax cut than the $550 billion the president wants could be handled in a fiscally sound manner. And George Voinovich would probably climb aboard. Is Voinovich right? Yes. But so is George Bush.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee, which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com
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