'Hi, we want
to raise
your taxes'

For the third year in a row, the House on April 22 rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have required a two-thirds supermajority vote of Congress to raise taxes.
Although the House voted 238-186 in favor of the measure, that tally fell 45 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage. (It would, of course, also have required ratification by three-fourths of the states.)
The measure failed by 49 votes last year, and by 37 votes in 1996.
The "progressives" -- those who figure we never have enough government, and that the Congress should busy itself 40 hours a week, drumming up some more -- whimper that the whole undertaking was a waste of time,

since everyone knew there were still too many Democrats to allow this thing to pass.
But that's not quite true. Many congressional votes serve the purpose of letting constituents know where their delegates to Congress really stand (which is why the GOP should keep its pledge and also demand a roll call vote on repealing the so-called "assault weapons" ban, by the way.)
Needless to say, the opponents of this tax restraint measure are seldom brave enough to honestly state that they think taxes aren't high enough right now -- that they want to make sure they can keep raising them, every year, till we all collapse under their yoke.
No. Instead, pro-tax lobbyists like the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities turned their side of the debate into a try-out for the position of contortionist with the local carnival, simpering that such an amendment could "lead to a proliferation of unproductive tax breaks that drain revenue."
Did you get that? Here I thought it was taxes that "drained revenue" -- our revenue, the kind

 
we like to bring home from work to our families. But no, it turns out it's tax "breaks" and "loopholes" that "drain revenue" ... from the ever-hungry federal beast.
Besides which, the proposed amendment would only make it harder to raise taxes. Anyone wishing to lower or eliminate a tax (create a "loophole," in the parlance of the statists) can do it with a vote of 218-217 right now ... and will still require 218 votes once this amendment is finally ratified.
The late and lamented UNLV economics professor Murray Rothbard used to tell a delightful story about his mentor, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, whose unfamiliarity with the American idiom sometimes made it difficult for him to follow the rapid-fire discourse of his younger associates.
Sitting in New York at a coffee-table economics discussion shortly after his arrival in this country, the late Prof. von Mises at one point turned to Mr. Rothbard and his young colleagues and asked "Loophole, loophole, what is this loophole you keep talking about?"
It took a few examples for the old man to get the meaning of the Americanism, at which point he smiled with understanding, and nodded, "Oh, I see. A 'loophole'

is when you still leave them some of their own money."
But the Democrats don't like "loopholes." Oh no. They want to "weed out existing loopholes."
Sounds so much better than a "tax hike," don't you think?
Mind you: the two-thirds requirement would not be a panacea. It would be a poor substitute for our congressmen simply going back to obeying their oaths of office, upholding a Constitution which spends a mere 431 words (Article I, Section 8) compiling an encyclopedic list of all the purposes for which the federal Congress is authorized to appropriate funds ... in which list one may search in vain for any federal Endowment for the Arts or Humanities, any Department of Agriculture, Labor, Housing, Human Services, Energy, Education, or Environmental Protection, or any Drug Enforcement Administration or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms ... just for starters.
Nor would the two-thirds majority present any obstacle at all to new levies in time or war or national emergency ... which makes one wonder just what the Democrats object to.
Regardless, the dividing lines are clear. While we might wish they would