“If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes”

That statement makes the case sound pretty open and shut. It’s a good thing Reagan didn’t listen to everything Mr. Volcker said, or we’d be in even deeper trouble now. The Library of Economics and Liberty has this to say on Reagan and Volker:

“High inflation was the result of a dozen years of bad fiscal and monetary policy under two Republicans — Nixon and Ford — and two Democrats — Johnson and Carter — that was brought under control only when Paul Volcker, the Carter-appointed head of the Federal Reserve, jammed interest rates up to national-heart-attack levels and left them there until inflationary expectations were well and truly tamed. Reagan had nothing to do with unemployment and interest rates falling; that was the inevitable result of a drastic monetary tightening finally working its way through the economy.”

The more we hear about Volcker, the less there is to like. True, he brought down inflation, but only by raising interest rates. No one dares address out of control Washington spending, right? Instead, we’ll just tinker with the Federal Reserve piggy bank. A Democrat at heart, the only answer Volcker has to any budget crisis is higher taxes.

That’s a shame. With so much redundancy in government spending, so many failed programs, and funding of State programs that shouldn’t be Federally funded, it seems like there are lots of ways to cut deficits without raising taxes. Of course, no one can deny that pork is built right into Washington politics. If you try and rip away any entitlements watch the liberals go after you. If you try to take away a farm subsidy or military spending, watch the Republicans go after you.

Maybe Volcker is right, but for a different reason. If Americans won’t stand up and tell Washington to just stop the spending (even if it costs them personally to do so), we may just need to have another tax. At the end of the day, Volcker deserves this one piece of credit: A new tax is better than going further and further into debt.

Better still would be to knock off the out-of-control spending. But without government power and money, how would any votes be purchased?

The only problem with the class was its teacher. Call me cynical, just one of those bitter people that go to church, if you will, but I just don’t buy it.

Since national security always seems to strike up emotions, let’s use that as an example. We could try the 911 thugs for maybe a million bucks in Gitmo. As John Stossel points out, that kind of number is just a rounding error in Washington. Instead, our team of national security gurus has been shopping the KSM show to various cities around the country at a cost of maybe 200 million, if you trust Mayor Bloomberg and his police Chief’s estimate.

Doing that sort of expensive thing doesn’t give Americans much faith in your ability to pinch pennies when times are tough.

Spending money is like crack to a Washington politi-thug. However much money got them high yesterday won’t be anout today. Let’s go to the highlight reel:

- The bank bailout (no it wasn’t needed, don’t even try that), $700 billion big ones.
- The AIG bailout, up to $180 billion now.
- The union auto bailout, that cost $75-$125 billion.
- The union cash for clunkers program…wait scratch that, that was a Japanese stimulus plan. That cost $3 billion.
- An $827 billion stimulus plan (don’t forget, it works!)
- A plane ride over NYC for a photo-op.  Yeah this one wasn’t *too* expensive, maybe only half a million, but it’s the thought that counts.
- Flying lots of congress people to Copenhagen for no good reason (at 2200 bucks per night per person for the hotel), $1.1 million.  Personally, I find that figure a little low.
Now this is a ton of waste, and I haven’t even listed all of them, just the most expensive or divisive ones.  However, I do have an idea for the KSM trial, and I think its going to be a win-win for everyone: Let NBC hold the trial, I hear they’ve got some programming holes these days, maybe around 10pm ET? As an added advantage, when the terrorists blow up NBC during the trial, no one will notice. Win-win!