To follow yesterday’s discussion about conservatives’ attitudes toward the deficit, here’s National Review‘s Kevin D. Williamson’s take:
If you spend the taxpayer’s money, you have to tax the taxpayer, at some point. You cannot magic that money into existence. As I’ve been arguing – ad nauseam, forgive me – taxes are a secondary issue. The primary issue is spending. As ye spend, so shall ye tax. The rate of spending is the rate of taxation; debt and deficits only push the date of tax collection into the future. You can collect the taxes today or you can collect the taxes tomorrow – but what you spend, you will have to collect.
And RedState’s Dan McLaughlin uses a thought experiment very similar to the one I wrote about yesterday:
This is going about the question all wrong. Would you rather have a federal government that spends 15 cents of every dollar earned in this country, while taxing 12 and making up the difference by issuing debt – or a federal government that takes in and spends 30 cents of every dollar? I’d much prefer the former. The Democrats don’t want to have that conversation at all.