John L. Perry
Thursday, Mar. 04, 2004

Leftwing presidential hopefuls offer something for everyone – for those willing to work, tax-paid government jobs; for everyone else, a tax-paid living in exchange for votes.

There’s nothing new about this. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest aide, Harry Hopkins, is reputed (but was a lot smarter than) to have said: “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect. That will be mandate enough.”

Whether Hopkins ever did say it is immaterial. There’s no doubt that was the New Deal formula. And it made a certain amount of sense at a time the nation was struggling to get out of the Great Depression, with the whole capitalist system at death’s door. Compared with that, the recent recession is but a dimple.

No Time for a U-Turn

Now, as the economy, which began its downward slide during the Clinton administration, is reviving at an unprecedented rate the Hopkins formula is a laughable farce. Worse, it is a recipe for swift return to recession or worse.

Even so, its leftist adherents among the Democratic Party elite cling to it as if it were a rosary on a runaway rollercoaster.

The surest way to bring the current recovery to a grinding halt and then slam it into gear-stripping reverse would be to cancel the tax cuts of the Bush administration, the very instruments that turned the Clinton recession into a Republican recovery.

From the Authors of Deficit Spending

Return now, just as things are getting better, to the Hopkins philosophy of tax and tax? Why tax and tax? In order to spend and spend, that’s why.

This is precisely what the hypocritical candidates for the 2004 Democratic Party’s presidential nomination want to do with the tax revenues. These are the same Democrats who – so atypically of those in their party in years past – now see deficit spending as a fate worse than death. Even when the deficit is at one of the lowest-ever percentages of the gross national product.

The question then emerges, and Hopkins has already answered it: Why do they want to spend and spend?

Insatiable Itching

To cure their itch for government programs addressing their innumerable social-policy agendas? Sure, in part.

To create more government so they and their allies may have more jobs to fill in more government agencies? Sure, that too.

The big reason, though, in the gospel according to Hopkins, is to: Elect and elect.

Republicans and others of conservative and moderate orientation badly misjudge leftist Democrats when they think they look at the Hopkins formula from the relatively limited perspective of self-aggrandizement – although that’s certainly part of what motivates them.

Through Their Eyes

The way the advocates of Hopkinsology really look at it – and this is what makes them so dangerous – is from the tunnel-vision perspective of voters too lazy or too unqualified to seek and hold a real job.

Hopkinsites are appealing to the growing number of people who want nothing so much as just to hang out, doing nothing or next to it, depending upon government to provide a tax-free or tax-subsidized living for them.

It’s coming to be known as “voting for a living.”

For those willing to exchange their voting birthright for government dependency there is no shortage of politicians out there – by no means all of them Democrats – who are only too ready to oblige.

Highly Contagious

If anyone thinks this addiction is confined to indigent, welfare recipients, think again. The welfare culture seeps like one, big, ugly stain throughout the social fabric.

There are farmers, manufacturers, teachers, assembly-line workers, lawyers, burger-flippers, doctors, garbage gatherers and, certainly, writers who are not above voting for a living. And don’t forget the professional politicians themselves, especially those who have never held a real job of work or met a payroll.

One of the big arguments the left trots out during, and in between, election years is: “Vote for us or you may lose your living.”

Horrors, Not That!

They do have a point, there. Electing public officials willing to put an end to swapping livings for votes means a lot of people are going to have to go to work, instead of just vote, for a living.

That rings as rather harsh, doesn’t it? Well, it is. And it should be. Why should those Americans have to carry double who want to work for their living but don’t want to be taxed and taxed again to provide livings for those who prefer instead to vote again and again rather than work for a living?

That dichotomy is going to be one of the clear-cut, major issues in the 2004 presidential and Congressional campaigns.

Not All That Difficult

When you hear any of the candidates, Democrat or Republican, talk about taxing or spending, ask where the money is coming from, where it’s going and why.

In a rational society, there is a rational place for taxing and a rational place for spending. There is no rational, or ethical, place for taxing and taxing and spending and spending to elect and elect.

Don’t vote for a living. Just vote, “No!”

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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