Not necessarily,  Wirt.  If private sector spending and income rises, so do
tax revenues.  That's why state treasuries found themselves with such
surpluses a few years ago.  Tax rates didn't increase...your tax bill
didn't increase unless you made more money, but public coffers swelled.  I
think that's what Ronnie was referring to.

John Lee


At 11:11 PM 8/11/04 EDT, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>Mark writes:
>
>>  And since spending has gone up every single year [1], this proved Ronald
>>  Reagan's assertion that the way to get out of deficits is to grow out of
>>  them.  Indeed, spending has gone up tremendously under GWB, but more than
>>  half of it has been non-military.[2]
>
>Spoken like a true believer in voodoo economics -- or a drunk in a winery.
>
>The national debt is a real quality. At the moment, approximately 1/4 of
>every dollar you pay in taxes goes to service just the interest on that
debt. In
>this situation, no products are bought, no services rendered, and not a penny
>of the debt is retired by that money.
>
>Each percentage increase in the national debt is an equal percentage increase
>in that portion of your taxes that services the interest on that debt -- and
>these dramatic increases in deficits are the equivalent of a tax increase,
>regardless of what anyone is telling you, all the while sticking the
primary part
>of the bill to your children.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>
>[1],[2] The quotations Mark cites are from the Heritage Foundation, a
>right-wing, conservative think-tank, praised for the quality of its
thought by such
>respected commentators as Rush Limbaugh.
>
>They write: "We want an America that is safe and secure; where choices (in
>education, health care and retirement) abound; where taxes are fair, flat,
and
>comprehensible; where everybody has the opportunity to go as far as their
>talents will take them; where government concentrates on its core functions,
>recognizes its limits and shows favor to none. And the policies we propose
would
>accomplish these things."
>
>For a proper interpretation of this paragraph, please see my previous posting
>on government-sponsored obesity research.
>
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