Sure, we believe in taxes.
We believe in a government that provides the services and level playing field that makes life safer and more secure. Like healthcare and policing. We believe in a government that creates opportunity for individuals and makes business possible and our institutions reliable. Like schooling and roads and the SEC.
We believe in paying for those services through taxes. We believe that cost should be equitably distributed to require more from those who have more and from those who make greater use of our country's infrastructure.
We do "Tax and Spend" and, because what we spend comes from taxes we pay, we want to have efficient, effective, and accountable government that makes the best use of those taxes. We are proud of that.
(crossposted from My Left Wing)
Conservatives, on the other hand,
Print and Spend. They don't like taxes, and yet history shows that they spend far more than liberals do. But they don't want to spend on stuff like schools, or healthcare, or helping the poor, or maintaining our roads and infrastructure- why spend money on
taking care of people? They spend money subsidizing the corporate sponsors of their campaigns, on pork for their home districts (often used ineffectively for things that aren't really needed - $250 million dollar unessecary bridge? How about a school?), and on
war! It might be more appropriate to say they
"Print and Waste".
How can they justify spending money on killing people over there instead of taking care of people over here?
It's easy- it's not our money anyway! Well...most of it is, but since they gave (rich) people a tax cut, and replaced the lost money (and much more) by printing it, they figure they have no obligation to spend the money on the public good.
They don't have to worry about little things like effectiveness (Katrina), effeciency (War on Terror- making us less safe since 2001), accountability (Medicare Part D[isaster], No bid contracts in Iraq with piles of money in duffel bags, deregulation leading to Enron and Worldcom). They just have to worry about keeping control of the printing presses!
But somebody will have to pay the bill eventually, whether it be through economic ruin or a generation with no services and high taxes to pay down an out of control federal debt. Somebody will have to pay the bill, and no matter how much conservatives pretend they can just print money without consequence or responsibility, it will be us.
Wouldn't you rather pay now for services that make your life better, that give your children an education and a future, rather than pay in a few years, and for the rest of your life, for the rest of your children's lives, to kill some people, create some chaos and maybe a nuclear war, and further enrich the already wealthy?
Which would you choose? Tax and spend, or print and waste?