Introducing the American Taxpayer Bill of Rights
House Conservatives Unveil Their Fiscal Agenda
By Bluey Posted in Congress | Featured Stories — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This afternoon Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R.-Tex.) hosted a conference call with conservative bloggers to unveil the RSC's new proposal for an American Taxpayer Bill of Rights. California Rep. John Campbell and Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn also took part in the call.
First, I'd like to note the significance of the call itself. The RSC decided to turn to bloggers to release the details of the proposal. Capitol Hill reporters will have to wait until tomorrow to talk to the congressmen. That alone signals a positive change.
As for the details of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, it includes four priorities -- or as Hensarling described them, "four corners of the house."
Read on ...
1) Taxpayers have a right to have a federal government that does not grow beyond their ability to pay for it.
2) Taxpayers have a right to receive back each dollar that they entrust to the government for their retirement.
3) Taxpayers have a right to expect the government to balance the budget without having their taxes raised.
4) Taxpayers have a right to a simple, fair tax code that they can understand.
Throughout the course of the year, conservative members will be introducing legislation to accomplish each goal. While the likelihood of success remains difficult in a Congress controlled by Democrats, Hensarling and Campbell said they would be using Republican presidential candidates as leverage to shine the spotlight on their priorities.
Bloggers participating included Erick Erickson of RedState, James Joyner of Outside the Beltway, N.Z. Bear of Porkbusters, Brendan Steinhauser at FreedomWorks, Fausta Wertz, Bruce "McQ" McQuain of QandO and Ragnar Danneskjold of The Jawa Report.
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I think Grey Cloak has the right of the matter.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
the last three. The first one sounds nice but too vague. Were there some details given at the conference call that help flesh it out?
Jeb Hensarling is from the District next door, and he's new, so he can be forgiven for such a wacky idea. As every once-reelected Congresscritter knows, taxpayers will believe anything, but the Princes and Princesses on Capitol Hill are the ones with the real Bill of Rights ... taxpayers just pay it.
1) Congress has the right to create ever more bureaucracies, headed by their friends and relatives on the SES Pay Scale, so they can pretend that they are creating solutions to problems that never really existed.
2) Congress has the right to spend every last penny of any "Trust Fund" lying around, thanks to the "Unified Budget;" why worry about the future, this Congress will be drawing fat retirement checks.
3) Congress has the right to take the largest annual revenues ever, spend them, claim "that's not enough," and raise taxes ever higher, because Congress can never spend quite enough to ensure reelection.
4) Congress has the right to make the tax code so complicated that not a single taxpayer will understand why they had to give up so much (except corporate tax lawyers, who understand that a few $hundred thousand in plane rides and contributions can reap $millions in tax breaks and subsidies.
Congress gets the bills ... taxpayers have the right to pay them.
This would all be so much more believeable if Republicans had made the slightest effort to behave this way when they actually controlled Congress.
I'm not impressed by their token effort.
Here it is, 2006 already, and finally there's a dead horse we can beat.
(By the way, you may want to look up "ad hominem tu quoque". There, I even made a clicky for you.)
(What? It's not 2006 any more? I thought for sure it was, what with the abuse that horse is still getting.)
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How is that applicable? Other than the guys that just got elected, most of the Republicans in Congress had plenty of opportunity to enact all of these items and yet completely ignored anything resembling fiscal restraint.
But you think it is irrelevant to point this out and nothing more than a logical contortion?
I completely disagree. Both parties show remarkable fiscal fiscal restraint when they are the minority and a remarkable lack of restraint when they are the majority.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
I applaud your cynicism, FH, really I do. You are incorrect that Democrats are fiscal conservatives when in the minority. They just aren't, no matter how much you wish it were so. The Republicans should have been fiscally conservative when in power, but were not.
However, using dissatisfaction with their past performance to mean that they cannot now express the proper policy is an application of tu quoque.
Approve or diapprove of the policy, not of the person.
It's even fine to say they should have been better, and they're just saying whatever they can to be popular. I am sure you won't try to go the next step, which is to disagree with the policy because the people espousing it didn't take their chance to implement it.
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It's even fine to say they should have been better, and they're just saying whatever they can to be popular.
This is the point exactly. It is very easy to cry for fiscal discipline when you can tell your constituents that the other guys were the pork barrel providers and you couldn't get anything done. Plays to the crowd. Everyone loves fiscal responsibility when they aren't the recipients of the pork.
It's another thing entirely to do so when you ARE in charge. And calls for fiscal responsibility 3 months after they lost the majority ring very hollow to me.
As for the actual policy itself I have no opinion of it. It is so vague as to be utterly meaningless. Maybe it would be good maybe it wouldn't. Given past performance by both parties I'll assume the latter.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
From the PDF (emphasis in original):
I don't want them to "do MORE with LESS".
I want them to do LESS with HARDLY ANY.
So there.
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