Rhymes With Right - Kennedy: It’s Not Your Money, It’s Our Money

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January 30, 2007

Kennedy: It’s Not Your Money, It’s Our Money

That is the implicit position he takes in this little snippet of debate over tying the minimum wage increase to a tax cut for small businesses which will be adversely hit by this unfunded mandate by the federal government.

"How many more billions of dollars do we have to give you, Mr. Republican?" the Massachusetts Democrat shouted. "How many more dollars do we have to give you to get an increase in the minimum wage? It is shocking. It is disgraceful."

Let’s look real close at this statement about the proposed tax cut. It speaks volumes about how Jabba the Drunk (D-Chappaquidick) understands tax policy and the federal role in the economy.

“How much money do we have to give you?”

Implicit in this is that the money made by a business – or an individual, for that matter – does not really belong to them. Rather, in Kennedy’s eyes every red cent of that money rightfully belongs to the government, and the portion that remains in the hands of the taxpayer is nothing less than a gift from the all-powerful government to the serfs that work to feed its insatiable appetite for tax dollars. Under this view, a tax cut is nothing less than a gift of government money to a private interest. Indeed, Kennedy doesn’t seem to understand that, as a government mandate, the minimum wage is no less a tax on business that a straight tax on profits, and so the proposed “tax cut” is nothing less than a trade-of of one tax for another.

Kennedy’s view is antithetical to American thought. Government is supposed to be limited, a servant of the people. Indeed, when Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed with the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, he was cribbing from John Locke, who argued that we had a right to life, liberty and property. Those who signed that document understood that the pursuit of happiness was, in fact, the pursuit of money and property. The Constitution of the United States concerns itself with limiting government power, and the Bill of Rights concerns itself with protecting the property rights of the people. Federal taxing and spending power were to be strictly limited, with the people entitled to the fruits of their labor with only a limited governmental claim upon their earnings.

Kennedy’s question is therefore grounded in a fundamental inversion of the founding principles of American government. There is therefore only one appropriate response in rebuttal to Kennedy’s cry of “How much money do we have to give you, Mr. Republican?” It is “No, Mr. Democrat – How much money must you take from the American people to feed the ravenous beasts of government spending and federal mandates?”

Will there be a Republican courageous enough to utter those words?

Oh, and as a side note, the tax breaks for small business (tax swaps, if you recognize the minimum wage as nothing less than a tax upon business) did pass.

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