A farce to those who think - criticism of budget summit - editorial

National Review, Oct 15, 1990 by Richard W. Rahn

AS THE National Endowment for the Arts picking up the tab for the three-act farce now running under the billing of a budget summit? The meetings have degenerated into a horror tale in which Washington ghouls pick at the corpses of American taxpayers and trade tasty morsels among themselves. The latest indecency came last weekend when Republicans offered up taxpayers' home-mortgage and charitable deductions to the tax-thirsty Democrats-after proposing the week before to slam Joe Six-Pack with excise taxes. The Democrats then set an all-time high for political farce when they offered to hold spending increases to only $33 billion. Genuinely obscene.

The economy has entered a recessionary period. Tax hikes now would only deepen and extend the recession, increase unemployment, and create grief for all Americans.

It is time to bring the curtain down on this charade. A 100-bilhon across-the-board sequestration is far preferable to the chainsaw massacre of taxpayers being planned at the budget summit. In fact, a healthy swing of the sequestration axe may be the only cure for bloated congressional spending habits. Otherwise, the chainsaw ultimately will fall into taxpayers' hands on November 6, leaving the President politically emasculated and the once-permanent Congress very temporary. Let the summiteers give New Jersey Governor Jim Florio a call. He knows all about fill-blown political revolt.