Suppose an ideal president were to tell the American people that the country is facing a fiscal crisis because Congress overspends. Suppose further that the president were to tell us we can withhold a percentage of our income taxes (say in proportion to the percentage of the federal budget to which we object to on an individual basis) and then issues a blanket pardon for anyone that withholds part of their taxes?
What would Congress do?
Give themselves a raise and hide all thier money in offshore accounts. Most of them would probably withhold thier taxes as well. I think the only people who would suffer would be the sick, the poor, the teachers and the soldiers. Based on the daily news I don’t think anyone cares about them anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Why do you assume that welfare spending would suffer as opposed to something like military spending? Wouldn’t there be as many hawks that would withhold taxes to protest welfare as there would be doves who would likewise withhold taxes to protest military spending? If most Americans were opposed to the welfare state, the Republicans wouldn’t have caught such grief when they took over Congress after the 1994 elections.
What I propose wouldn’t allow individual tax payers to have any more say in setting spending priorities, but an overall reduction in tax revenue would necessitate a re-setting of priorities on the part of Congress.
But, my guess is that very few people would withhold their taxes if they knew government “services†would be cut. The furor over the government shut down in the 1990s proved that.
I didn’t assume that. I included soldiers in my list of people who would suffer.
Depends on how you define suffer. The military is really one of the biggest welfare programs the country has when you consider what peacetime GIs get in pay and benefits compared to what a civilian can get working a job. I would venture that most of our military budget goes to things like housing and healthcare rather than weaponry.
That’s quite possible.