The director of the heavily sponsored National Taxpayers Union would have you believe that the big spenders come from states who receive lots of taxpayer funded money from the federal government. If that were truly the case then the most frugal legislators on his list would come from places like New York, Oregon, Minnesota, and Wisconsin because these states receive far less than most in terms of tax dollars paid into the federal pool. States like Alaska, Idaho, and Texas should be the happiest with the federal government since they are among the nation's highest recipients of federal tax dollars. Why is that we don't hear more about the tax resistors and separatists from New York and Minnesota or Oregon instead of the ones from Texas and Idaho? This would seem to contradict that theory - or does it?
The fact of the matter is that it is not government spending that brings out the anti government sentiment; they can spend, spend, spend - especially if it goes right into his/her pocket directly or as money spent in his/her district. No, it is the taxes and restrictions that government places on him/her that bring out this anger. It is no accident that nearly all conservative [I use that term loosely, referring to the political conservatives as designated by the commercial media] spending programs are NEVER paid for by raising taxes and all their restrictions are packaged to restrict "somebody else" - usually demonized wrongdoers of some sort. In my lifetime, nobody has EVER raised taxes in order to actually pay for military spending; it is quite likely that the last time anyone tried that in this country was back when good king George decided it would be nice if the colonists actually paid for the use of British military forces used to protect their persons and financial interests here. Well, we all know how that turned out. A good rule of thumb about determining if something is part of the conservative big government agenda is knowing that they NEVER pay for THEIR spending by raising taxes. Liberals could learn a lot from them!
5/2/97
