Tax and Spend Liberals

You’re an American conservative, and you hate taxes.

You know, Read my lips, and all of that. Two of your most recent political heroes are Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Reagan left the White House after running up with the biggest debt in U.S. history. Bush easily outspent Mr. Reagan and ran up a still larger debt, setting a record almost beyond comprehension. The difference seems to be that Mr. Bush entered the White House with a substantial budget surplus.

Tax and spend is the conservative’s favorite label for Democrats and liberals. They regularly single out their intentions to reduce the size of the federal government. Then they spend billions of tax dollars while making carefully orchestrate tax reductions that benefit people with substantial wealth. All, of course, in the name of getting the well-to-do to invest their new tax savings so they can improve the lot of the ordinary folk.

The Soviet Union finally collapsed after over-spending on its defense budget. Ronald Reagan’s plea to Tear down this wall has turned out to be a pleasant catch phrase conservatives now play back as though removing the wall directly resulted in the disintegration of the Soviet Union into Russia sans its several Eastern European and Central Asian additions.

Now, Mr. Bush is spending, with billions and billions and billions of dollars disappearing in Iraq and Afghanistan with no accountability and little or no paper trail. We look at the price of a barrel of oil and don’t even know how much of it goes for military transports -- ships, jets, Hummers, tanks, trucks, helicopters, et al, -- let alone the ever-increasing supplies used to import most of our daily goods from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, et al.

Cracks are appearing in our economy as the one-time Great Arsenal of Democracy struggles even to manufacture competitive automobiles. Japanese and Korean vehicles consistently out-perform and out-sell American products. Germany makes some of our Cadillacs, and China is selling cars in South America that one U.S. company plans to sell here under its own logo.

Russia caved first. Conservatives are proud of that. If our demise is next, they’ll be equally proud that they accomplished without raising taxes.

1) Tax and Spend -- N-E-V-E-R!

2) Spend and Charge -- See No. 1!