DECREASE IN INCREASE

Cuts. That word appears in print and is heard on radio and television over and over when the subject is governmental spending or taxes.

Hikes. More. Increases. Those words should rather be used. They would be true. “Cuts” generally is a falsehood, sometimes an outright lie.

Politicians and the reporters who cover them, not to mention the editors who oversee the wordsmiths, seldom tell us the truth about “cuts” in spending. For actual reductions in governmental outlays almost never occur.

Those supposed reductions are actually smaller additions to much larger outlays of taxpayer dollars. The reason is that federal budgeting – when it actually occurs and is enacted into law – begins with baselines, which is governmentese for spending requests with inflation built in. Automatic increases, in other words.

And, one might notice, the talk about the Bush tax cuts, which were actual reductions in income tax rates that could only be agreed to by the political parties in Congress if they had an expiration date. The “cuts” in this instance are really current rates. There is, thankfully, a recent tendency in news and commentary to refer to them as the Bush tax rates. Those rates were actually extended the last time the problem of governmental expenditures and debt were at the forefront. If those Bush rates were kept in place there would be no reductions in taxes; if they were allow to expire at the end of the year, there indeed would be increases in tax rates for the next tax year.

So, the reader might ask here, what’s new about that? And the answer is nothing. Still, should not all of us – taxpayer and beneficiary of governmental largess – call an increase an increase? Maybe such truth-telling would result in some worthwhile public discourse, instead of political deception.