If you live in Texas you have certainly heard a big hoopla about Texas’ budget deficit. It is certainly not of the magnitude of California’s’ but its getting up there. 

What is surprising about the deficit is that Texas has served for many years, as one of the banner states for effective conservative budgets and of the effectiveness of low taxes to stimulate growth and sound financial decisions. In a scathing article titled “Everything’s Subsidized in Texas”, Jonathan Chait writes about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s hypocrisy in dealing with money from the 2009 stimulus package. While publicly deriding the stimulus money, Perry was glad to take as much as he could to cover up the reality of Texas’ situation; a budget deficit. Now that the money has dried up, Texas faces massive spending cuts in much of its public programs in order to make up the difference. This exposes, I believe, a bigger problem.

The moral bankruptcy of low taxes. 

The middle of last year I read an article titled “The Political Genius of Supply-Side Economics”. If you have a time to read it go ahead, but if no I will quote a passage from it:

To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.

The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification – the argument from incentives – for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state.

Among the multitude of pseudo-religious ideas that pass as politics and economic policies now days, none sees to be so backwards and anti common-sense as the idea of low taxes.

Why this idea is dangerous is self evident. Government, like any institution needs money to run, while a short period of low taxes has proven to have good short term benefits, a continuous state of low taxes only has as consequence the ability to bring government revenue to zero. 

Now, a lot of conservatives see no problem with this. This is because the idea of “low taxes” is commonly followed hand to hand by the idea of “limited government”.

What is interesting about these ideas, is that they have have long ago ceased to exist as pragmatic points of discussion from which the work of governing is done. They have instead transformed into self-fulfilling prophecies of anarchist consequences. As the Tea Party works to elect public servants that have no interest on doing the actual work of governing, but instead focus on “stopping the ineffective government” they in fact lay the groundwork for an ineffective government. 

It is there where the moral bankruptcy happens. Actual public servants worried about making our government work, on both parties, recognize the danger of such policies. It’s easy to see it when Rick Perry touts to his base about the “evils of big government” but then when it comes to balancing the budget he gladly takes any money the Fed offers. It is in the actions that reveal the true intentions than in the actual job of making government work. Money matters. In making raising taxes the equivalent of political suicide, governments now days face very grim realities and the primary victims of budget shortfalls tend to be the main services that we actually all agree the government should be in charge of making work: education and law enforcement. 

How we have descended into such depths of cynicism is hypocrisy is beyond me, but the reality is this: if we cannot elevate our discourse from extremists ideologies that aren’t rooted in the realities the complex job that is governing, we will soon make fast work of tearing down the institutions that have taken centuries to build. Switching the discussion from childish ideas like low taxes into actual adult ideas like “let’s figure out how to make our government WORK” might be a good start.