Dakota Beacon

Updated from post originally in American Thinker on April 7, 2011

The name for this post could have just as fittingly been “Economic Ignoramuses in Wonderland.” As you read, picture in your mind Ayn Rand’s mousey Atlas Shrugged character Wesley Mouch, the top dog at the novel’s Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. Mouch is the government’s economically clueless economic dictator.

A Democrat party boasting a generous population of Mouches is now at work conceiving economic absurdities during a tentative recovery from one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. In downturn after downturn, among the effects of consumers’ reduced spending lie three crystal clear impacts.

1. The wealthiest people cut spending and speculative investing more than anyone else. With less capital at the disposal of companies that thrive on consumer spending and investor dollars, profits throughout the private sector weaken and jobs disappear.
2. Companies scale back operations in proportion to decreased demand and/or move operations overseas to produce output with skinnier cost structures.
3. The biggest charitable contributors, wealthy people, cut back charitable contributions the most.

Yet as economic recovery seems finally set to take shape, Democrats are contemplating proposals to raise tax rates on millionaires, companies that shift operations overseas, and wealthy taxpayers who donate to charities. The Hill captures the Democrats’ thinking in a quote from an anonymous “senior” senator who declared, “We Democrats have demonstrated that we’re willing to make these cuts; we’ve gone over halfway. Are [Republicans] being so unreasonable to say we can’t raise any revenues?”

Let’s get this straight.

Democrats go on a two-year partisan tear of legislative, regulatory, and executive order-driven political tyranny. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and a Democrat-controlled Congress push a five-year 30 percent increase in federal spending. Bush, the Democrats and Obama nearly double the national debt since 2004. And not a word is spoken about “unreasonable” fiscal behavior by any “senior” Democrat.

Yet when Republicans call for $61 billion dollars in spending cuts (1.6 percent of Obama’s proposed but never voted-on 2011 budget), said demand is unreasonable.

It would be reasonable, Democrats are essentially contending, to keep 92 percent of the $800 billion in annual spending hikes since 2007 in place and set about confiscating more and more taxpayer money to pay for the fiscal drunkenness.

The “progressive” mentality is again on grand display.