Good Government Has to Bite?
Today, Instapundit linked to this Howard Kurtz article, with the following line as a teaser:
But seriously, folks, has Congress become something of a joke?
I was excited to read on. You bet Congress is a joke. An out of control joke. But then, in the next paragraph, he says this:
Are these toothless lawmakers no longer capable of passing anything with bite?
Bite? BITE?! Everything Congress does bites. Every single day it does something to increase regulation or paperwork requirements or adds another necessary license or government approval process or tax or subsidy. I may spend as much as half my time in my business just on government compliance and taxation issues. Is that really Kurtz's concern, that the Congress does not pass enough legislation with bite??
Later in the article, he says something else I thought I would agree with:
isn't it telling that the one thing lawmakers can agree on is handing
out goodies as opposed any measure that involves the slightest
sacrifice?
Absolutely, I thought. All Congress does is spend money on useless hurricane "relief" and earmarks and bridges to nowhere and subsidies for ADM and don't forget that new prescription drug entitlement that will cost a ton of money once someone figures it out. So given a Congress hell bent on spending like a drunken sailor, what does Kurtz use to illustrate his point of "handing out goodies?"
Of course, there is one issue on which Congress seems poised to act: extending tax cuts
I know that we libertarians have fought this issue and never seem to be able to win, but having the government let private citizens keep more of the money they earned is not "handing out goodies". Handing out goodies is when you take tax money from one person and give it to another who did not earn it. Tax cuts are one of the few things that inhibit handing out goodies. Run far away from anyone who claims that tax cuts are handing out goodies, because it means that they consider your money to be the government's, and what portion you keep is yours not by right but by the grace and goodwill of the Congress who determines how much you get to keep.
