One Reason Folks Like Sarah Palin

Here y'go:

I’m glad the Senate came to its senses and killed the omnibus spending monstrosity. That outrageous trillion-dollar pork buffet was an outright slap in the face to the American public’s expressed wishes in the last election. It was as if Congress was earning its historically low 13 percent approval rating before our very eyes. I applaud senators like Jim DeMint, John McCain, and others who fought this and stopped it.

However, the very fact that some lawmakers on Capitol Hill thought such reckless spending was even remotely acceptable is disturbing. We’re facing trillion-dollar deficits and a record national debt, but some people still want to continue spending like there’s no tomorrow. If the European debt crisis teaches us anything, it’s that tomorrow always comes. Sooner or later, the markets will expect us to settle the bill for the enormous Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge. We’ve already been warned by the credit ratings agency Moody’s that unless we get serious about reducing our deficit, we may face a downgrade of our credit rating. Even the lamest of lame ducks can’t ignore this reality.

Now, of course, some folks on the Left will immediately holler, "Of course we want to reduce the deficit! We've got to raise taxes!"

I think it was at the last Democratic National Convention that Neal Boortz was doing his radio show, and some big-wig Democrat mover-and-shaker came by, and to his credit, sat in for a while with the Talkmaster. Boortz asked him a question that he'd previously said he'd always wanted to ask some high-level Democrat.

"What is the maximum that any one person should have to pay in taxes?"

The answer came back, missing not so much as a heartbeat: "Not one penny more than is necessary to pay for essential governmental services."

It was slick, but it was a total non-answer. The debate immediately becomes over what governmental services are "essential." In effect, though possibly unintentionally, the man was admitting that if people came to regard enough governmental services as "essential," there might be no limit on the percentage of your income you'd have to pay in taxes.

Raising taxes to pay for bloated government is not the answer any more than putting more money into the grocery budget is the answer to obesity. However, since darn few, if any, governmental services will be admitted by the Left to be non-essential, in practical terms, it is the only answer they will consider.