I Am Not a Tax Surrender Monkey

A comment on the blog chastisted me for foreclosing support for a tax increase and demanding the budget be balanced through reductions of spending. Writes the commenter:

Preemptively taking any and all tax increases (or even letting current tax cuts expire) off the table before negotiations even begin makes you about as unserious as liberal Democrats who say any cuts in spending are out of the question…conservative genuinely interested in cutting the deficit (like myself) would acknowledge the reality that a balanced budget borne purely out of spending cuts is probably impossible right now. The real mission, then, is to fight to make the share of deficit reduction composed of spending cuts as big as possible. 

Fooey!

First of all, I want to correct a misconception that Kootenai Conservative apparently has. I will not be part of the budget negotiations between the White House and Congress. As such, I cannot take the possibility of raising taxes off the table or put it on there.

I am not a politician. I am a citizen of the United States who happens to maintain a blog that posts about politics. I am not preparing to accept a tax increase. I’m not going to tell my readers to prepare for a tax increase or to be open to one. And any member of the GOP leadership who publicly pronounces themselves open to a tax increase is a worse knave than I feared.

Go and search the left wing columnists, go and search the left wing bloggers. Who is telling the political left that the budget can’t be balanced by raising taxes on the rich and that government is going to have be to be cut beyond just cutting the military? Find me the left wing blogger who is telling people that the real “fight is to make the share of deficit reduction composed of tax increases as big as possible.” No one on the left is telling anyone that. They are ripping their garments and wailing over the miniscule and insignificant cuts that have been imposed so far.  They are immoral, they are wrong. They don’t know if they can support Obama because he signed off these tiny cuts.

The last thing in the world I want is for Republicans to walk into that room thinking that we, the base, are going to accept raising taxes. You will end up with a huge tax increase and a bunch of illusionary spending cuts that will never materialize. It will be 1990 all over again.

The Democrats will enter the negotiations knowing that the decision to cut spending seriously will put their political careers in mortal peril. The only way, anything good will come out of those negotiations is if Republicans know the same thing about raising taxes.

Read more at Adam’s Blog