Not One Penny More For America's Welfare State

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Investors Business Daily:

During last summer's debt-ceiling negotiations, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote that Republicans who rejected "trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases" would reveal themselves as "fanatics" with "no sense of moral decency" — clearly "not fit to govern."

The problem with "the parallel universe inhabited by GOP ideologues," according to the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, is that "tax cuts are not a matter of policy but of faith."

The Obama administration's purported willingness to reduce the deficit and rein in spending, all in exchange for Republicans abandoning their hysterical opposition to rounding-error tax hikes, was belied by the 2013 budget it submitted.

It envisions federal debt held by the public, 36.3% of GDP as recently as 2007, doubling to 74.2% in 2012 and staying above 75% of GDP for the entirety of a second Obama term.

The budget calls for spending increases now, nebulous spending discipline in the distant future, and tax increases on the top 50th of income distribution to energize Occupy Wall Street drum circles.

Critics who think more responsible fiscal options have been foreclosed by GOP intransigence would have you believe that the anti-tax movement is nothing but belligerent extremism. The truth, however, is that in rejecting tax hikes, Republicans aren't trading in fanaticism. Rather, they're confronting a governing failure — an abiding lack of candor about what our welfare state costs — that voters grasp but Democrats refuse to admit.

Over the last 40 years, government revenues have kept pace with economic growth while government spending has run steadily ahead .