Gorging the Beast
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
An Ode to Taxes: Oh, little tax return form/No longer are you sad and lorn./Fly away with your friends in a crowd/And try to make your filers proud./Maybe you’ll fix a road or a park/Just please don’t turn into another earmark.
“April 15th has long been and always will be a day American workers and their families despise,” said the House minority leader, John Boehner, on Wednesday as he hailed the arrival of anti-tax tea party protests around the country. Actually, given the fact that a vast majority of households get refunds, the day might be a pleasant reminder that the check for $2,429, on average, is in the mail.
Still, there’s one strain to the well-orchestrated chorus of tea party complaints that does seem to have hit a chord. It’s the worry that President Obama is trying to do too much at once, spending too much money without making the tough decisions about how to pay for it all.
Some conservatives, including my soon-to-be-colleague, Ross Douthat, have suggested that the president is doing a reverse version of Starve the Beast. That was, you will remember, the Republican theory — brilliant except for its utter wrongness — that if you cut taxes enough, the lack of revenue would force Congress to reduce the size of government.
(More here.)
NYT
An Ode to Taxes: Oh, little tax return form/No longer are you sad and lorn./Fly away with your friends in a crowd/And try to make your filers proud./Maybe you’ll fix a road or a park/Just please don’t turn into another earmark.
“April 15th has long been and always will be a day American workers and their families despise,” said the House minority leader, John Boehner, on Wednesday as he hailed the arrival of anti-tax tea party protests around the country. Actually, given the fact that a vast majority of households get refunds, the day might be a pleasant reminder that the check for $2,429, on average, is in the mail.
Still, there’s one strain to the well-orchestrated chorus of tea party complaints that does seem to have hit a chord. It’s the worry that President Obama is trying to do too much at once, spending too much money without making the tough decisions about how to pay for it all.
Some conservatives, including my soon-to-be-colleague, Ross Douthat, have suggested that the president is doing a reverse version of Starve the Beast. That was, you will remember, the Republican theory — brilliant except for its utter wrongness — that if you cut taxes enough, the lack of revenue would force Congress to reduce the size of government.
(More here.)
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