Cut Taxes and Cut Spending!

[Updates below.]

Los Angeles Times via Yahoo!: GOP Takes Off Gloves in Bout of Budget Infighting

Eclipsed by the furor over foreign policy, Congress' debate over the federal budget has slipped quietly into an impasse that is no garden-variety partisan standoff. It is a battle among Republicans over what their party stands for, analysts say.

At issue is whether this year's budget should put the brakes on the tax-cut drive that has been a hallmark of the Bush presidency, and instead put more muscle behind an old GOP orthodoxy: reducing the deficit.

[...]

A small but powerful faction of Senate Republicans is insisting that the fiscal 2005 budget include rules that require any future tax cuts to be offset so their effect on the deficit would be neutralized; that would mean either cutting spending or raising taxes in other areas. The proposal would strike at the core of President Bush (news - web sites)'s domestic agenda if he is reelected by making it much more difficult to cut taxes.

But House Republican leaders have vehemently opposed the pay-as-you-go requirement as an affront to their party's credo that, when it comes to taxes, the lower the better. They have kept the requirement out of the budget resolution passed by the House ? and have openly questioned the loyalty of Republicans who disagree.

"It is a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party: Is it a party about deficit reduction or a party about tax cuts?" said Stanley Collender, a budget expert at Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington.

Copyright © 2004 Los Angeles Times
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Mr. Collender, this is a False Dilemma! This is not an either-or proposition. The Senate Republicans who want budget rules that reduce spending along with cutting taxes have it right. Don't increase taxes elsewhere; cut across the board and cut everything. Do it to taxes and do it to the budget. Push back against the tide of rising statism and start the process of returning the US to limited government.

Otherwise, stop bothering to even label yourselves apart from Democrats, acting as if there are any serious fundamental differences between the two parties. Continue to posture and bicker over the details of increased government control over our lives. And don't ever expect to be taken seriously.

UPDATE(6/3/2004 1:09pm)
Can't Cut the Budget; Politicians Will Eat Me!

Posted by Drizzten at June 01, 2004 01:39 PM