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| A/O Global Intelligence Weekly: The Moral Imperative For Tax Reform |
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Discussions are ongoing over President Trump's tax reform package that is currently meandering its wa throught Capitol Hill -- all to the wailing and gnashing of teeth from a liberal media eager to hamstring conservative solutions in the public square.
President Trump has laid down the agenda for tax reform. Several plans have been proposed. We here at American Opportunity/Free Congress put forward the backbone of the Trump tax reform package back in 2010 by publishing the Growth Code.
The main point is not just a series of tax cuts, but a program of serious and generational tax reform to achieve the purpose of solid and lasting economic growth. If the economic growth is not achieved by the tax reform? The ultimate goal simply is not achieved and will not endure -- the Great Recession being the most obvious example of what happens when policy makers substitue saccharine for substance.
Of course, the radical do-nothing left has their mantra: "Tax reform; is only a tax cut to the rich."
One is instantly reminded of the late UK Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher's response to such nonsense -- these left-wing troglodytes would rather the poor be poorer, provided the rich were less rich.
To combat this, some have suggested conservatives counter with the message of "tax cuts for the middle class" and so forth. A tax cut for the middle class is fine, but one is forced to caution against shifting our language to the rhetoric of mere tax cuts.
In Virginia, when I made the promise to cut Virginia's punitive and regressive car tax, such a program of reform was a tax cut for the middle class and all classes that expanded opportunities by allowing those most impacted by regressive and punitive taxation to keep more of their hard-earned pay.
Yet such tax cuts are but a small part of the equation of comprehensive tax reform, and the political left would love nothing more than to balkanize the Trump tax reform package and conquer each piece one by one -- all in an effor to stymie our economy and keep opportunities centralized in the hands of a few.
Our goal as conservatives must be a rising, vigorous economy with better jobs and rising wages -- one the creates a thriving and independent middle class with an escalator for the working class to keep more of what they earn, all while providing job creators the opportunities to thrive and prosper.
Yes -- that vision has enemies, all held in thrall to various political ideologies and secular religions more bent on utopia than realism.
Our task as conservatives in the tradition of Edmund Burke and William Buckley is to set aside the dash for utopia and provide a realistic but optimistic framework for the tremendous capacity of the human spirit to achieve better lives for themselves -- not the lives handed down by the diktat of a distant web of bureaucrats.
Those bureaucrats -- in the media and within the federal government -- are assiduously at work trying to cripple and balkanize Trump's tax reform plan. By keeping our eyes on the goal, we serve the purpose of providing the best chance for our children and grandchildren to keep the American dream alive and well for future generations. It is their future and not some abstract idea that should embolden us to see tax reform through before the end of 2017.
More after the jump. . . |
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