Growls

The American Spectator has an online column posted today in which J.T. Young explains “the difference between thine and mine.” Young begins:

“The President's budget reform panel is being encouraged to sniff for smoke in the midst of flames. At its latest public meeting it was told that tax breaks are "backdoor spending." There is a two-fold problem in accepting such an equivalence. First, the nation's fiscal predicament is not any so-called "backdoor spending," but uncontrolled "front door" spending. Second, not only are the two not quantitatively comparable, they are not qualitatively so either.

“The budget reform panel, officially named the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is akin to a fire marshals' convention in a burning building. How hard could it be to follow the flames to an inferno? In the case of the federal budget, the government is spending a quarter of all America produces -- the highest peacetime level in U.S. history.”

Young makes a number of good point, which I’ll leave for the reader to delve into. In his conclusion, he points out:

“To fix the nation's fiscal problems, we must control its spending. To control spending, we must recognize that the money is not government's, but taxpayers'. And to do that we must acknowledge that taxpayers have a greater claim on their money than the government ever can.

“If we are going to talk of reform, we must at least start from a common understanding, and an accurate one, of what real reform entails. This can not be done, if we fail to properly recognize what should be the first fundamental principle between a government and its citizens.”

Some sound advice, J.T. Thanks!