Taxes, Spending, and Political Morality

Public discussion about the role, scope, and function of government is terribly misleading. It should worry us that our leaders can systematically manipulate public opinion on government policy using little more than vague inflammatory language.

Take for example the reliable consternation against “big government.” No politician endorses “big government.” Most insist that they prefer “limited government.” Unfortunately politicians rarely explain what they mean by “big” and “limited,” and this allows people pursuing radically different agendas to sound equally reasonable.

Democratic government is the vehicle through which citizens act collectively. Using the vehicle of government the people, through our elected representatives and political appointees, accomplish two basic things. We set and enforce the rules that shape our common life and we administer programs aimed at promoting the general welfare.

Because government has two basic pursuits, there are two basic ways it can exceed proper limits. One way is for the rules of our common life to become onerous, intrusive, or oppressive, or for our law enforcement agencies to become so. The other involves our engaging in unjust or ineffective public projects, or allowing expensive bloated bureaucracies to grow up around these projects.

Responsible critics of big government specify the sense in which they think our government is too big. When responsible critics think our laws are overly intrusive, they tell us which laws offend them, why, and what alternative laws (if any) should be enacted. If they think the agencies that enforce our laws are overbearing, they identify the agencies, describe the abuses, and advocate measures to restrain them. If, on the other hand, they believe we’re engaged in unjust, unnecessary, or ineffective public projects, they tell us which projects are problematic and why. If they think government bureaucracies are bloated and wasteful, they identify the offending institutions and propose specific reforms.

Unfortunately, political opponents of big government do far too little of this, particularly when their targets are social programs. Most direct our attention towards taxes and spending, vaguely construed. In pursuing his original tax cuts, President Bush regularly issued warnings noting that “the American people have been overcharged,” “the surplus must be given back to the people before congress can get its hands on it,” and “it’s not the tax cut that threatens the budget; irresponsible spending by congress is the real threat.”

It’s not that we should have dismissed such warnings. They might have been correct. The problem was we couldn't evaluate whether or not they were correct without confronting far more fundamental questions about what we should or should not be doing through the vehicle of government. And that discussion never took place.

Consider the idea of a “budget surplus.” A surplus exists when anticipated tax revenues exceed currently planned spending. That’s simple enough. But this tells us nothing about whether currently planned levels of spending are appropriate. Suppose we eliminated all social programs aimed at alleviating poverty? We’d then be running unimaginably large surpluses at current levels of taxation. However, if we added health insurance for all of our nation’s citizens, we’d be facing inevitable tax increases.

Should we pursue either of these options? People disagree. What’s clear, however, is that we cannot determine the right course simply by citing or criticizing current revenue projections or current levels of spending and taxation. That’s because these are not financial questions. They are moral questions. They are questions about the proper role and scope of democratic government. How high government spending ought to be, or how heavily we ought to tax ourselves, must be determined in light of plausible answers to questions of political morality, informed by current circumstance. They cannot be rationally determined on any other criteria.

Sadly, the accepted form of debate reverses this process and lets the tail (taxes and spending) wag the dog (our conception of proper government).

Politically speaking, this is understandable; it’s an effective strategy. The problem is that it undermines the deliberative capacity of the nation and results in bad policy. Citizens of every political stripe should work to prevent our leaders from shaping public policy to their liking by focusing on taxes and spending in the abstract. And this includes a President Obama. We must force libertarians, socialists, and everyone in between to state their philosophies plainly and defend their visions of democratic government on their merits.

Otherwise we’ll continue to get policies reflecting the interests of the most successful rhetoricians, and nothing more.

Joe H.