Cutting taxes for everyone so we might have more financial discretion is an invitation to irresponsibility, Bill Clinton has said. Government never asks if we can afford higher taxes. But with some exceptions, government is looking for ways to tax and spend more. The Wake County, N.C., commissioners recently voted 4-3 to raise local property taxes a whopping 16 percent. Republican Gov. Jim Geringer and many legislators have opposed any income tax in the past, but now say they'll give it serious consideration.
Excessive taxation is a relatively new phenomenon.
Since 1993, Clinton's first year in the White House, per person taxes have increased by 25 percent. I've lost count of the number of overt and hidden taxes. As House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer noted in The Wall Street Journal last week, tax cuts make good sense in good times. The best way to get money into the hands of people who are responsible for revitalizing the economy and who could extend it even to Appalachia is to get government out of the money-management business and turn more of it, along with greater responsibility for managing our lives, over to us. We are locked into a mentality that there is a limited amount of money to go around.