Out of Control Government Spending

In tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, actually my former representative, has an opinion published about the Republicans alternative budget. Rep. Ryan does a good job of showing how government spending does not have to get out of control, like the President would have you believe, while we can still achieve the most important objectives.

My problem with Rep. Ryan's and other conservatives' views of the government is that it doesn't go back to what conservatism should be, smaller government and lower taxes. The only one that does is Rep. Ron Paul who believes that taxes are just the government's way of stealing your money.

The top marginal tax rate in 2009 is 35% and the lowest is 10%. That is just the federal income tax rate. Depending on your state you could be paying an income and sales that as well. Add in property, payroll and medicare taxes and the final tax bill could be 50%, 60% or more of your income. Why does the government need the majority of our money? At what point in our history did we come to accept such high tax rates?

The first federal income tax was put into place in 1913. The highest marginal tax rate was 7%. By 1918 the top bracket was 77%. It just goes to show you that if you give politicians an inch they will take a mile.

The President's proposed budget increases government spending to 28.5% of GDP, a level that we last exceeded during World War II. By 2019 the debt would be 82.4% of GDP, this level was last reached in 1947. The President so far has said that he will only raise taxes on the rich to pay for all of this. I however don't believe him, if you look at the tax rates in 1947, the last time our debt was as high as it will be in 2019, I think you may agree with me. In 1947 there were 23 different marginal tax rates ranging from 22% to 91%. In order to balance the budget and run a surplus to pay off the debt we are going to have to raise taxes to the levels we saw in 1947, since that is the equivalent that we are going to spend. Doing so would mean a tax increase for all Americans.

How would punitive tax rates be good for Americans? What would it do to the economy? I think you know the answers to both of these questions. I am in the same boat as Rep. Ron Paul. Taxes are the government's way of stealing money. They waste half of it on the bureaucracy and another third on programs the government should not be doing. Rep. Ryan's proposal is a start, but tax rates should be around 10-15% or less not 35%. The only way to do this is to cut spending now. We need to go back to what we were founded on, small government that is a necessary evil.

The CBO gives us a sobering picture of the future, as you can see most of our problems come from the social programs instituted by liberals and the ones the President wants to expand. In the spirit of the President, we can not wait to fix this, we must act now.