Crime and punishment

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: June 7, 2008

Raskolnikov, the protagonist in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, fancies that he can achieve intellectual superiority by ignoring his own act of gratuitous violence. Both legislative chambers are taking a similar approach to budget writing — the crime being the $3 trillion lawmakers plan to spend next year, and the punishment, the almost $4 trillion in tax increases projected over the next decade.
The budget resolution, which the House is expected soon to approve, is inflated to the bursting point, so much so that it turns off even Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican whose voting record colors him blue and makes us feel it, and Sen. Evan Bayh, the lone Democrat to oppose the package. Others in Bayh’s party authored most of the blueprint, which is roughly the size of a Russian novel.
President Bush proposed increases in spending for schools, roads and other domestic programs, so naturally, Democrats, wondering how else they might drive down congressional approval ratings, increased spending further still. Bush’s tax cuts helped keep the economy humming through 9/11 and an unpopular war until the housing collapse precipitated a slowdown, so Democrats will allow the cuts to expire.
Both parties agreed that previous farm bills reeked of pork, so, of course, they also agreed to increase farm spending and pad the deficit by $20 billion, all while championing the legislation’s merits (see, at right, the retort of Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, to our criticism of him and the bipartisan farm bile, er, bill).
A few Bush tax cuts, such as expanded child tax credits and the elimination of the marriage penalty, would survive based on occurrences roughly as likely as the reverse rotation of Earth on its axis or Beltway politicians being miraculously infused with logic. These happenstances include soaring budget surpluses, which the resolution predicts will reach $22 billion in 2012 and $10 billion in 2013, a remarkable turnaround given next year’s projected deficit of $340 billion.
How to reach the surplus thresholds? Simple. Halt spending in Iraq. This perhaps requires John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate who recently displayed his hatred of timetables for withdrawal from Iraq by declaring that his election would ensure victory there by 2012. It might require something else: magic, which even if a supply of the stuff could be found, America likely would be proscribed from tapping it for fear of disturbing polar bears.
In addition, the criteria to retain some cuts include limiting discretionary spending growth to just 1.8 percent, though the plan increases spending in that category by 8 percent next year. In other words, all of the Bush cuts will go when he does, which in both cases, for Democrats, cannot happen too soon.
Naturally, straight-faced Democrats beam with pride: “We have passed a fiscally responsible budget, and that is a major accomplishment,” declared Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Budget Committee. “It provides tax relief for the middle class. It invests in energy, education and infrastructure. It will expand health coverage for kids.”
It also will nudge federal finances, and Americans with it, to the breaking point, all while baby boomers position themselves to begin their apocalyptic entitlement drain, but why go negative? White House Budget Director Jim Nussle muttered something about the congressional budget resulting “in the largest tax increase in our nation’s history,” but who pays attention to such people?
Committing, then turning a blind eye to an offense leads to breakdown, an arrest and finally redemption in Dostoevsky’s world. In ours, the conclusion likely would be less romantic. Americans struggling now to muddle through a burgeoning recession would shoulder an additional $3,100 per household in taxes over 10 years. This burden in turn would limit investment, prolong or worsen the downturn and reduce the flow of tax revenues.
In other words, Americans who ignore the ramifications now will find they cannot later.