"Adding" to the Deficit

It seems there is still a disconnect between liberals' and conservatives' definitions of deficits and tax cuts.  Ed Schultz was grilling Michael Medved about "hypocrisy" within the Tea Party movement.  According to Schultz, the Tea Party is hypocritical for not crying foul over the current tax deal.  The tax deal "adds" to the deficit.  This is the liberal mindset.

According to liberals' world view, all money belongs to the government, and the government "lets" us keep a portion of the money.  Therefore, any money not collected in taxes "costs" the government money and "adds" to the deficit.

This world view stands in stark contrast to the conservatives' world view: all money belongs to those that earn the money, and we give some of our money to the government by way of taxes.  Deficits are created by out of control spending in Washington, not by low taxes.  When taxes are raised, it costs American tax paying citizens money.

The Tea Party's platform is smaller government.  They contend that tax money in the hands of Washington leads to a wasteful government and corruption, and I personally would like to see someone argue against that.  Forcing Washington to run off low taxes will keep government smaller and give more power to the individual citizen, which seems to be what our Founding Fathers had in mind.

So from the Tea Party angle, it's been no secret what the tax rates were under GW.  Washington should have made spending decisions based on that income, but instead, they made decisions based on their own needs for power as well as on an idea that they would begin to charge the American taxpayer for Washington's out of control spending.  Absolutely not cool to the Tea Party.

So back to Ed Schultz.  Let's see if he can wrap his mind around a simple concept: keeping tax rates the same does not cost the government money and does not increase the deficit.  Spending more than you take in increases the deficit.  Sending college students on trips to China and billing it as stimulus increases the deficit.  Much like a consumer that has charged up credit card debt that they can't pay off, so too has the federal government.  And much like the individual consumer, the federal government got themselves into this mess, and they are going to have to get themselves out of this mess.