I read this article by Froma Harrop on RealClearPolitics, and I have to ask: which conservatives is she talking about when she declares that we "contend that taxes must be raised"? She casually discards the option of cutting federal spending by assuming that conservatives agree the government should be responsible for stimulating the economy, something which we do not in fact agree on. She seems to back up this erroneous argument by saying that, because Republicans in Congress claimed to be conservatives and took the deficit to new heights in Washington, conservatism cannot legitimately claim to be the ideological home of fiscal responsibility anyway. Finally, she hems us in by saying that conservatives don't like debt (at least she got that one right) and so our only option is to raise taxes. Riiiiiiiight... While I agree that if a reduction in federal spending does not occur then taxes will have to skyrocket (I'm talking MASSIVE increases, especially on corporations and the wealthy), this conservative is of the mind that we haven't even gotten our hands dirty on spending cuts yet, and, as I've said repeatedly (see here and here), the government is not going to spend us out of this recession. We've got plenty of jungle yet to hack away at before we even talk tax increases.
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I'd like to know what the readers here (particularly Tony) feel about the application of the Laffer curve and the subsequent possibility that even massive tax increases will realize little marginal increase in government revenue due to the decreased GDP. This should be doubly true in a recessionary environment.
We be screwed folks. I've never been less happy about imminently making more money in my life.
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