That is how E. J. Dionne E. J. Dionne saw it:

[T]here are Republicans in Congress whose top priority is to force through legislation making the Bush-era tax cuts for the best-off Americans permanent, thus expanding the deficit by about $700 billion over the next decade.

So on the one hand, we have to cut, cut, cut because fiscal catastrophe is looming. On the other, we have to make the problem worse by shoveling more money to the rich because...taking care of those with tidy incomes is contemporary conservatism's highest purpose.

It may be contemporary conservatism's highest purpose to take care of those with tidy incomes. My purpose--a libertarian purpose--is to take care of anyone with any income. But I digress.

On Dionne's view (not that he is the only one who has it) when the government doesn't take your money, it is giving you money, or, to put his way, shoveling money to you.

Your money. Shovelled to you just because someone decided not to take, or to take less than previously was being taken from you. How generous!

You know, by that sort of logic (I'm being generous in calling it logic) if you and I pass each other on a sidewalk and don't rob each other of the money in our bill-folds (or wallets) then we have each made a gift to the other of the money we didn't take. What generous people you and I are!

What Dionne wants to know is why cut taxes when the deficit is so big? These people. I cannot recall the last time I heard anyone on the left say, "Okay, now it's a good time to lower the tax rates for everyone, including the rich." For almost every year I've been following politics, I have heard leftists complain about Republicans lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans and (I love this part) balancing the budget on the backs of working families. We couldn't lower tax rates for the wealthiest Americans before the present malaise. We can't do it now.

It would be nice if they would stop pretending they'll ever think any time is a good time for tax rate cuts for all of us, including the so-called rich.

It would also be nice if they would stop arguing (still being charitable) as if the deficit is the fault of the rich. Most of what the unfederal government does--and spends money on--isn't constitutional in the first place. Why in hell should any one pay the bills of a government who cannot be prevailed upon to obey the "law of the land"?

P. S.

The reason I didn't post on this until now, is I didn't want to look like a partisan, unlike Dionne. I like to discuss the issue of taxation as such, not as part of some statist party's political platform.