“Balanced Approach” = Tax Hikes

I love our friends over at Voices for Children. They have truly never met a tax or spending program that they don’t like and their latest opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal, they stay true to form.

The author, Fred Harris (apparently a very left-wing former professor at UNM) writes that a “balanced” approach to New Mexico’s budget involves all manner of tax hikes, but not a single area in which spending could be reduced. In the “Voices” world, government is the highest moral use of all of society’s resources. We individuals should just forget about holding onto any of our money, even if government programs like the Rail Runner, film subsidies, and Spaceport fleece average taxpayers for the benefit of wealthy, well-connected people.

There is a lot the left and right can agree on (like questioning the merits of various tax incentives), but if the solution is always more taxes and more spending, there is no common ground and we’ll fight them every step of the way.