Predictable Prescription

President Obama loves a laugh line he uttered during his convention speech and is now on tour with it, using it to stoke up his campaign whistle stops.

Obama told us that Republican policy amounts to this: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call us in the morning.”

Obama is correct that tax cuts don’t magically cure behemoth deficits or leviathan debt. And, frankly, Republicans are often as loathe as Democrats to cut — really cut — government spending.

But it’s not as if Obama were the Lone Ranger when it comes to hacking away at the federal octopus, constantly proposing only balanced budgets and demanding shutdowns of federal agencies and programs. No. Obama, like so many in DC, demands ever higher spending, ever higher taxes, ever more regulations — as exemplified by Obamacare. The president demonizes as Darwinian dastards all who support even vanishingly small reductions in projected increases in spending.

If the GOP plays a one-​note tune of tax cuts, ad infinitum, the Democrats’ have their own long-​playing record spinning around and around: the idea of government as the solution to every problem. But whatever “fiscal irresponsibility equivalence” exists between Republicans, who want to cut taxes in the face of trillion-​dollar a year deficits, and Democrats, who want to keep spending more, the underlying issue remains whether we need more government or less.

Take less government, less spending, lower taxes, and call me on election morning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.