Isn’t this a time for “government economic restraint” — on all levels?
It has been a long time since anyone could make a valid argument that we have “too little” government.
Many of our financial problems result from the fact that we have too much government, that taxes us too much, that spends too much, and that tries to do too many things, depressing our economy.
Our federal government is certainly guilty, as current red-ink spending of about $1.5 trillion a year shows. But state and local governments have problems, too.
Washington officials simply ignore the national debt close to $13 trillion — and keep on spending. State and local governments can’t dodge so unrealistically.
In Tennessee, which usually is rather restrained in taxing and spending, we see Republican legislative leaders pointing to a need to cut proposed spending by more than $25 million!
It’s easy to expand programs and expand spending. It’s hard to pay for them. It’s hard to make big cuts in proposed big spending.
Chattanoogans should be quite aware of that. The mayor has proposed city budget spending that would require a staggering 64-cent property tax increase — from $1.94 per $100 of assessed property value to $2.58!
Who wants spending cuts? Who wants high taxes?
Even in “good” economic times of greater prosperity in an expanding economy, tax increases are rarely welcomed. But certainly, we should be looking for ways to avoid bigger spending on city, county, state and national levels, with trillions of dollars in more debt on the national level.
It’s hard to face economic realities. It’s worse not to.
It is almost impossible to restrain federal government. Too many officials, from the president through senators and representatives, seek to appeal to voters by expanding spending, promising to “give us something,” dodging the responsibility of paying for it.
But state and local governments can’t spend too much without immediate responsibility. Our people tend to understand the connection between taxing and spending on local levels, but often have a disconnect from irresponsible spending and taxing on the federal level.
With unemployment close to 10 percent, this is certainly no time to expand government spending beyond essentials, or to raise taxes.
In time, after difficulties, we expect to rise above recession. But there are too few signs that enough of our elected officials have gotten the message that this is clearly a time for substantial restraint in both taxing and spending.
Shouldn’t we “send them the message”?