The Missing Voice in the Debate over Taxes!

I keep hearing the debate over “extending the Bush tax cuts” (or not) framed in terms of only these two sides:

Left: "If Republicans are serious about deficit control they have to agree to let the Bush tax cuts expire for 'the wealthiest Americans.'"

Right: "In the midst of a serious recession, it would be irresponsible to let the Bush tax cuts expire, raising taxes on small businesses where most jobs come from."

My frustration is that no one is expanding the discussion beyond these narrow parameters. These two positions speak past one another, neither being responsive to the other. This is an ideal opportunity for an interviewer to guide and expand the discussion.

I certainly agree with extending the Bush tax cuts. The single most important business sector we need to cultivate for the health of the economy is startups and small businesses, especially those in the $250k to $2.5M range. This is the incubator for the innovation that has always been America’s strength.

The missing voice in this debate is a call to SHRINK THE SIZE AND SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT! This is clearly a core issue driving the Tea Party movement. Indeed, the very invocation of imagery from the original Boston Tea Party era is borne of a desire to move back in the direction of our original constitutionally limited republic. The founders never intended the vast expansion of federal government that we see today. One can only imagine the horror of our founders if they could have seen what would become of the limits to power and scope they worked so hard to craft. This is the over-arching theme that animates every Tea Party event:

“Cut Spending, Cut Taxes, and reduce the Size and Scope of government!”

There is a voting majority today that is long past the notion that “entitlement spending” is some sort of untouchable “third rail” of government spending. We are anxious to have a debate with EVERYTHING on the table. The way to frame this is to take the original constitutional limits as the lower limit, and the present state as the upper limit, and work for something somewhere between these two limits.

I cannot remember when I last heard a single interviewer expand the discussion about tax cuts to include corresponding spending cuts when the Left tries to raise the spurious bogey man of deficits; you never hear the word deficits cross their lips when the Left is voting to add $Ts in new legislation.

Cut spending... cut spending... cut spending... Are you listening inside the beltway?

CUT SPENDING!!!