Charles Davenport Jr.: Where’s the outrage?
Tea party, anyone?
Elaine Mejia, director of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center, recently applauded Sen. Kay Hagan for voting against cuts in the estate tax, which is also known as the “death tax” (“Hagan made right choice on the estate tax,” April 9). The legislation Hagan opposed, Mejia writes, “gives tens of billions of dollars to the richest people in this country over 10 years.” Those funds, the author insists, “would be better used to reform health care or reduce the deficit.” Besides, she adds, “the estate tax only affects estates starting at $7 million per couple.”
Mejia’s approach to taxation exemplifies a dangerous but quite common mind set that James Madison foresaw over two centuries ago. In The Federalist No. 10, the prophetic “Little Jimmy” wrote as follows: “The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.”
The spirit of Madison lives on in the modern champion of limited government and lower taxes. We would like to remind progressives that the federal government doesn’t “give” billions of dollars to anyone, because the government’s source of funds is the American taxpayer — and the much-maligned “rich” pay a disproportionate share.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent of income earners pay an astonishing 39 percent of all federal income taxes. They and their affluent neighbors, the top 5 percent of income earners, pay 61 percent of the total. In light of these statistics, “tax cuts for the rich” are long overdue.
I am not one of them, by the way. My income is less than one-fifth of the baseline that typically qualifies one as “rich” ($250,000), yet federal and state government confiscates more than 20 percent of my paycheck.
Furthermore, the fact that the death tax applies only to estates worth at least $7 million does not diminish its perniciousness. Suppose that “only” 10 people were mugged in Greensboro Friday night, and all 10 victims happened to be wealthy. On Saturday night, again, “only” 10 people were mugged, but all of the victims were “middle-class.” Is it rational to conclude that Friday’s crimes were less offensive than those that took place Saturday?
Although left-wing activists disapprove of billions of dollars being “given” back to the taxpayers (those to whom the money belongs), doing so is the ideal course. But if those funds must be spent elsewhere, they should at least be applied to legitimate federal purposes, in realms of authority explicitly granted by the Constitution.
Cheerleaders for the bloated Nanny State may be surprised to learn that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to engage in health care reform. National defense, on the other hand, is an enumerated power, and therefore, a legitimate expense.
W.E.H. Lecky, an acclaimed 19th century historian, wrote that the progressive tax, such as the current American system, “is a direct penalty imposed on saving and industry, a direct premium offered to idleness and extravagance.”
“Dishonest politicians,” he warned, “will have no difficulty in drawing impressive contrasts between the luxury of the rich and the necessities of the poor, and in persuading ignorant men that there can be no harm in throwing great burdens of exceptional taxation on a few men, who will still remain immeasurably richer than themselves.”
Envy has indeed become a weapon utilized by Nanny State politicians and activists to mobilize the ignorant against “the rich” who, presumably, do not pay their fair share. Where is the outrage over the fact that the federal government ignores the 10th Amendment restrictions on its power, and squanders billions of dollars undertaking unconstitutional initiatives; that the industrious and ambitious provide for the slothful and indolent; that the self-reliant individual of American tradition has become a revenue-producing drone in service to the almighty State?
Where is the outrage over the fact that the federal government, in order to “stimulate the economy,” will spend additional trillions of dollars to be repaid by our children and grandchildren? (Never mind that FDR’s New Deal — the program the Obama Administration emulates — did not achieve the desired results.)
The outrage finally became apparent on Tax Day, as citizens in Greensboro and nationwide participated in Tea Parties to protest these and other excesses of the Nanny State. The limited-government philosophy, wounded in November, may yet be revived.
Charles Davenport Jr. (daisha99@msn.com) is a freelance columnist who appears on alternate Sundays in the News & Record.
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