Round 2 — Lower Taxes

Republicans tout that the want less government and lower taxes and they are willing to cut a few social programs and even essential services like in order to lower taxes, but so be it.  They argue that we should put our trust in people, not in government pushing issues of public welfare and community sustainment (charity, security, public investment, regulation of trade, etc.) to individuals, to families and to communities.  The argument is that government spends too much and that if left to the people, these expenditures would be much lower.  When in the majority, the GOP then takes the next logical step and reduces taxes.  Unfortunately, this has consistently resulted in more federal debt.

What would the Founding Fathers do?  Well, we honestly don’t know but we can see what they said and did. 

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”

James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 57, February 19, 1788

“‘Political writers,’ says a celebrated author (David Hume), ‘have established it as a maxim, that, in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, but private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and by means of it make him co-operate to public good, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition. Without this we shall in vain boast of the advantages of any constitution, and shall find, in the end, that we have no security for our liberties, and possessions except the good-will of our rulers—that is, we should have no security at all.'”

Alexander Hamilton, February 5, 1775

“All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.”

Benjamin Franklin, letter to Robert Morris, December 25, 1783

It seems that just cutting taxes and not putting in place government that “promotes the general welfare” (as you get with social programs) IS NOT what the Founding Fathers would have espoused.  Then they took the most extraordinary action.  They wrote a new US Constitution (1787) and created federal powers to collect taxes, regulate trade, and “promote the general welfare.”  Then the federalized all the debts from the Revolutionary War, moved the US Capitol to a district outside all of the states[i].  The founders were not afraid of taxes, they just wanted to control who imposed the taxes.

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[i] The District of Columbia was carved out of Virginia and Maryland as an independent Federal District which is not a state.

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