From CNN, today -
Last week, Democrats joined by four moderate Republicans forced the Senate to approve a provision requiring that any tax cuts or spending increases for benefits like Medicare be paid for with other budget savings.
But Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said he wants to push a bill through his House budget panel on Wednesday that would clamp that restriction only on spending increases, not tax cuts.
“They pay for themselves” by strengthening the economy, Nussle said of tax cuts in a brief interview Tuesday. “We shouldn’t have to pay for tax cuts” by finding offsetting savings from elsewhere in the budget.
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As the deficit climbs towards the half-trillion mark (which, by the way, is the absolute limit that we’ve imposed on our credit debt here in the fiscally responsible Felber household), I have to ask myself how these tax cuts are paying for themselves. What currency are they paying in? Why haven’t we cashed their checks? If they’re not paying for themselves yet due to a sluggish economy and “personal reasons,” can we expect those tax cuts to pony up the interest when they finally sort out their issues?
Maybe, I’m thinking, we could send those tax cuts a strongly-worded letter. Nothing threatening, of course, just a reminder that they’ve taken a lot of money that they said they’d pay back right away and, frankly, haven’t. You know, something like:
Dear Tax Cuts,
Hi! We’ve been looking over the books, and we can’t help but notice that you’ve drained quite a bit of cash from our piggybank. So we were wondering… could you, maybe, pay some of that back to us like we’d kinda agreed on? Maybe soon?
No rush - if you can’t do it, we understand. We’ll just sort of tighten our belts when it comes to social services, environmental protection, education, roadwork, and whatnot. No biggie. We can do it, and we’ll put the rest on a credit card or something. It’s just that - with the war and all - we’ll be darned if we can see how we’re going to pay for all this stuff.
But hey, that’s not your problem, right? You tax cuts pay for yourselves, after all, and we totally appreciate that. Really. But if you could just go ahead and, um, do that, uh, sometime, why that’d just be swell. Aces. Really.
Love,
The U.S.A.
P.S. We’re sending you some more money, just to tide you over. You’ll pay that back too, right? ‘Course you will. Sorry to even bring it up.
Fanny Roborat
7 comments
Linkmeister
March 16, 2004 at 8:20 pm
1Ahem. As a recipient of some dunning letters in my time, I think you need to work on the tone a little.
Johnboy
March 16, 2004 at 9:16 pm
2Dear Mr. Felber,
Your words are reprehensible, Sir. To even think that President Bush may favor the rich means you want Osama bin Laden to win. After all, where would OBL be without all that money to support him from Saudi Arabia.
Oh. Now I get it.
tess
March 16, 2004 at 9:29 pm
3as a player of simcity, i know how supply-side economics works. but damn it! those liberal programmers over at maxis made it so that if you cut taxes, you can’t afford schools or hospitals except giant cities, and no one wants to move to your city unless it’s big or has a school! honestly, who wouldn’t move to a city without a school? it’s patently outrageous!
Murray
March 16, 2004 at 10:04 pm
4OK, let me get this straight.
The less taxes we take in, the more it pays us.
Hey I’ve got the solution! We not only reduce the taxes to nothing, but we have the government pay us, like a negative tax. That will make so much money that we will all be millionaires. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
Wow, this is so cool, I’ll be a millionaire. Fer sure man, wow a millionaire. Wow.
Bryan
March 17, 2004 at 12:42 am
5The ultimate irony would be if the son of “Read my lips: no new taxes” was forced to increase taxes. He seems to be copying everything else his Dad did.
The way things are going, I really think he should be lining up people to help him move. If you wait to late, they’ll all have something to do that weekend.
Dee
March 17, 2004 at 8:56 am
6“THEY PAY FOR THEMELVES”
Well, there’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ll never get out of debt now. Them elves require a lot of upkeep. Just ask Santa.
Ed Drone
March 17, 2004 at 3:45 pm
7No way that W is going to do what his daddy did and raise taxes! Among other reasons is that W has to out-do his daddy, didn’t you know? He took out Saddam, which his daddy never did, he cut taxes and hasn’t raised ‘em, which his daddy had to do, and he won’t make his daddy’s mistake of neglecting re-election merely to make the government work — no, he certainly won’t do that.
So, no tax raise, no tax reinstatement, no sunset for his tax law, no sirree, Bob! Not even if the deficit reaches $700 Billion (which it has, if you include the Social Security Trust Fund “borrowing” he’s been doing, which is the only way to compare his time in office to Saint Ronnie’s blessed reign) and the country is going to the dogs. No, no fact of life will intrude into his faith-based alternate reality, you can count on that.
Ed