Skeptical of "tax and burn" Republican taxation policy

Oliver Wendell Holmes 
“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

This is another skeptical "echo" letter to the editor, published in the Asheville North Carolina newspaper "The Citizen Times", by Dave Stewart:

In the days when I had a young family and a modest salary, I remember all too well the sleepless nights that coincided with tax time. How was I going to gin up those payments? No one likes to pay taxes, but very soon we must, as the Bible says, “Render under Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

But let’s move beyond the pain of paying taxes. Oliver Holmes Jr. said it best, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” A civilized society is one where citizens in every income level can attend a quality school. The transportation system is maintained at high levels of safety. A high value is placed on clean air and water. Well-trained police, firefighters, and military personnel are available to protect the public. A civilized society is one where everyone has access to quality medical care. These things don’t come cheap, but all are worth having as is painfully evident if you have visited a state or nation where such things are not valued. It’s our taxes that make decent civic life possible.

That’s why I am more than a little mistrustful of slash and burn anti-tax organizations that have as their single goal that of reducing taxes. Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle. They say that nearly 1,400 elected officials at the local, state, and national levels have promised in writing to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase income taxes on individuals and corporations.” A business analogy to this philosophy would be if oil companies told gas stations that they could never raise gas prices no matter what the variation in costs of doing business. How many business owners in any category could survive in that administrative environment?

“Government waste” and “unnecessary programs” are usually cited as reasons why governments don’t deserve to be supported. I lived in Washington D.C. and also a state capital long enough to know that there is such a thing as government waste. Yes it happens, but in my experience it is relatively infrequent. Fortunately, we are blessed in most places with bureaucracies that are mostly competent and typically honest with many good people staffing our government offices. But bureaucracy can sometimes be dysfunctional as a way of getting things done. We need media reporters and sharp- eyed citizens groups to monitor the work of bureaucrats and keep them accountable. What we don’t need is the kind of indiscriminate bashing that can make it difficult to attract and retain good public servants in local, state, and federal offices.

As for “unnecessary programs”, like most taxpayers I have my own list. I have noticed, however, that the implicit definition of unnecessary or wasteful programs by too many low tax advocates is “any program that does not directly benefit us.” Anti-tax foes have been on the front lines of the Republican effort that tried to crush the Affordable Care Act and successfully produced highly questionable “tax reform.” I would be willing to bet that they will play the same role as additional programs are threatened with a trip to the chopping block. These efforts in many instances must be opposed.

It is dead wrong when a high medical bill can cause a family or seniors with modest incomes to go into bankruptcy. It is also dead wrong for some low- and middle-income Americans to be faced with higher taxes and temporary tax cuts while wealthier citizens see large tax cuts that are permanent. If you would like a moral issue in politics, I will hand you that one.

Almost nobody thinks of paying taxes as honorable but like military service it is crucial in maintaining a civilized society. Although one is much more dangerous than the other, both are essential. Both are patriotic, and both are expressions of solidarity with our fellow citizens. Why should there be such a drastically different attitude toward one as opposed to the other? Democracy thrives only when its citizens realize that they are all in the same boat and behave accordingly. A tax -starved government cannot be a good government.

So grit your teeth if you must but be glad you live in the USA where paying taxes is a privilege and where governments more often than not give us our money’s worth.

Dave Stewart has lived in Asheville for 21 years. He can be reached at stewartdw@charter.net.