Reply #13: Bush has grown government spending substantially

[quaker bill]

So what he intends is hardly relevant. Bush will create a financial crisis, whether he intends to or not is hardly relevant.

There is no national sales tax. So what Dean did in Vermont with them is hardly relevant. The context is not the same. When the problems are different, intelligent people adopt different policies. The type of analysis you pose is precisely meaningless.

Bush transfers taxes from the Social Security tax to fund his deficit. The Social Security tax is the most regressive federal tax and under this administration more and more general fund spending is coming from this source.

Dean proposes to balance the budget. This will allow the revenue from the most regressive tax to be used to fund the needs of those who pay it.

Others, such as the candidate in you avatar, propose to not bring the budget in balance as quickly. This means that the funds from the most regressive tax will continue to be used to fund, say for instance, his proposed expansion of the military.

Deficit spending is an injustice. It is an injustice to take payroll taxes from the first dollar a minimum wage worker earns and spend it on military expansion. This is exactly what deficit spending does in the current context. Since curtailing the growth of spending will reduce or eliminate this injustice most quickly, then I am pleased the Dean supports it. I will also be most happy to pay higher taxes to see this done.