There are two myths behind Democrats' insistence that taxes should be raised to reduce federal budget deficits.
The first myth is that higher taxes lead to a net increase in government revenue. In fact, they often bring in less revenue. That's because they choke off private-sector economic growth and thus shrink the economic base on which taxes are collected. The history of our nation's tax increases provides ample evidence of that - and evidence that tax relief expands growth and ultimately brings in greater tax revenue from a broader economic base.
But just for the sake of argument, let's pretend that tax increases could somehow be accomplished without hurting economic growth, and would simply be "free money" the government could use to reduce the deficit.
That's where the second myth comes in: the myth that extra revenue from tax increases would actually be used to reduce deficits.
Look at our current federal budget, which has our nation spending about $1.5 trillion more, through borrowing, than it is raising in taxes that are already too high. Now consider our massive $13.2 trillion national debt, on which we must pay hundreds of billions of dollars in interest every year.
While too many Republicans have gone along with Democrats' wasteful and unconstitutional spending, Democrats have had control of both houses of Congress since 2006. Nothing in their nearly four years in control of Congress shows that they would use extra tax revenue to pay down the deficit.
To the contrary, they have ignored their own "pay-as-you-go" rules, under which they supposedly would not spend new money on anything if they did not cut spending somewhere else. For example, they added billions of dollars to the debt this year by repeatedly approving unemployment benefit extensions without curbing spending elsewhere - such as spending on the failed, $862 billion "stimulus." Republicans wanted to pull back wasteful stimulus funds to pay for the benefit extensions, but Democrats said no. They were determined to increase debt.
So when Democrats say they want to increase taxes at the end of this year - supposedly only on "the rich" - why would anyone believe that they would use the added tax revenue to reduce budget deficits? Far more likely, they would spend more dollars for things other than red-ink reduction.
The federal government doesn't need to be larger. It needs to be smaller.
Any new tax dollars almost certainly would be spent wastefully, and would harm the very economic growth we need to pull out of this recession.
Tax increases should be defeated.