President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Washington are attempting to convince the American people that the solution to our massive national debt is a combination of major tax increases and a few - eventual - spending cuts here and there.
They call that a "balanced" approach to reducing our crippling $14.3 trillion debt.
That argument may seem reasonable on the surface, but it doesn't bear up under historical scrutiny. The fact is, when tax increases are imposed in exchange for vague promises of spending cuts down the road, the American people wind up with higher tax rates - but the spending cuts often fail to materialize.
Ryan Ellis, tax policy director of Americans for Tax Reform, detailed a couple of relatively recent cases in which that type of bait and switch has taken place.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush went along with a large tax increase proposed by Congress, which at the time was controlled by Democrats. Supposedly, over the subsequent five years, federal spending was to be cut by twice as much as taxes were to be increased.
That sounds fairly sensible, right?
The trouble is, it didn't work out that way.
The tax increases were put in effect, taking more of the income of the American people. But rather than decreasing, federal government spending actually wound up rising. What was supposed to be $274 billion worth of cuts turned into tens of billions of dollars in new red-ink spending!
Only the tax increase part of the bargain was kept; the promised cuts in spending were simply left by the wayside.
The same thing had happened a few years earlier as well.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan went along with a deal that was supposed to cut $3 in spending for every $1 raised in new taxes. Once again, the promise of tax increases was fulfilled, but the spending cuts didn't pan out.
That is obviously not a pattern that Congress should repeat in the current battle over balancing the budget.
As Ellis, of Americans for Tax Reform, put it: "There is a clear lesson from these budget deals: Tax increases are real - they become law immediately - but promised spending cuts are illusory. ... After a while, the spending-cut promises are forgotten, and all that remains is higher taxes on the American people."
Washington has proved time and again that it will spend every new dollar it gets - and then some!
That's why it is so terribly important that the current Congress not approve legislation that will raise taxes as a supposed "cure" for our national debt. Such a deal won't reduce the debt; it will make it bigger.
Reckless spending got us into this mess. Cutting spending - starting immediately - is the way out.