[dude1394]

Lessee now, how can I spends more money while making it look like i'm not spending more money. I know, I'll raise d'em taxes.

And ker-splat goes the economy.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/...ves/010009.php

The House and Senate passed a massive budget bill yesterday, a fact lost in the heat over the immigration compromise, that expands federal spending to almost $3 trillion dollars. At the heart of the new spending, now and in the future, is the elimination of the Bush administration's tax cuts from 2001-2003. The Los Angeles Times asks whether that amounts to a tax increase:

The House and Senate on Thursday approved a $2.9-trillion federal budget blueprint that, depending on whom you asked, contained the second-largest tax hike in history or, conversely, no tax increase at all.

How are such different readings of one document possible? It could happen only in the world of Washington budget-speak, where political spin is at least as important as fiscal reality.

The new budget resolution, the first to make its way through Congress since Democrats took control, anticipates almost $3 trillion in spending and just under $2.7 trillion in revenue, leaving a projected deficit of about $250 billion. ...

At the heart of the dispute are the major tax cuts that President Bush pushed through Congress soon after taking office in 2001. Congress, then controlled by Republicans, approved the cuts but specified that they would expire after 2010 unless Congress extended them — a provision designed to make the size of the cuts more palatable. The GOP has since sought to make the cuts permanent.

Now the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have voted to let some of the cuts expire — particularly those that benefit the wealthiest taxpayers. For example, the new budget resolution would allow tax rates on high-income Americans to revert to pre-2001 levels in 2011.

Tax cuts don't "expire" unless taxes get raised. Americans who pay taxes know this from long experience. Regardless of the reason or the mechanism, when taxes go up, they increase -- a fact so obvious that only Beltway insiders can get it wrong.

The Bush administration and the Republicans had to accept the sunset provisions in order to get the tax cuts passed. At the time, Democrats and a few Republicans (John McCain among them) had doubts as to whether they would actually stimulate the economy and drive a recovery from the 2000-1 recession and subsequent mediocre performance. They wanted a mechanism to raise taxes back to the levels at the time if the cuts didn't perform as advertised.

Well, they did. The tax cuts sparked an economic expansion that continues to this day, one which has increased revenues to the federal government by 22% since their full implementation. The lower rates improved capital investment in the economy, created jobs and lowered unemployment to 4.5%, and expanded prosperity.

What has been the Democratic response? Not only to raise taxes back to the pre-expansion level, but to add even more federal spending on top of it. It envisions a 5% increase over FY 2007 spending just to start. That's the largest single-year increase since 2002, and it comes on the compounded increases of 3-4% year-on-year of the Republican Congresses of the Bush term. It represents a whopping 40% increase from FY 2000, when the budget came in at $2.1 trillion.

The current Congressional leadership doesn't want people to think that they're raising taxes. If not, where do they expect to get the money for the federal budget expansion? They will take capital out of the marketplace, where it creates and maintains jobs and production, and stick it into a federal system which burdens both -- creating an even greater need for federal spending on entitlements and welfare.

This budget shows that while Republicans spent like drunken sailors, they managed to avoid picking pockets like Fagan's ring of young thieves while doing so. The Democrats want to give us both.

UPDATE: And it gets worse. Take a look at page 50 of the Conference Report. The actual size of the budget is $2.965 trillion, which makes the year-on-year increase slightly higher than I said -- but that's not the real problem. Within four years, the Democrats want to push the budget to $3.274 trillion, an increase of 10% over their proposed spending for next year, and an an increase of almost 20% over this year.

It was just ten years ago that the budget was under $2 trillion. It has already grown 35% in ten years. By the time 2012 rolls around, it will have increased 44% in the previous ten-year cycle under this plan.