Steny’s groundwork on raising taxes.

Quick: what does a video like this signify?

Yup, it’s a helpful warning that you’re about to be reminded that you shouldn’t believe Democratic politicians when they promise to not raise your taxes.

Take it away, Steny!  No, really, take it away: we don’t particularly want this.

Tax cuts that benefit the middle class should not be “totally sacrosanct” as policymakers try to plug the nation’s yawning budget gap, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Monday, acknowledging that it would be difficult to reduce long-term deficits without breaking President Obama’s pledge to protect families earning less than $250,000 a year.

[Snip of blather about temporarily ‘extending’ the Bush tax cuts, probably at the same time that they create and pass a budget this year. Oh. Right.]

“We’re lying to ourselves and our children if we say we can maintain our current levels of entitlement spending, defense spending and taxation without bankrupting our country,” Hoyer says in remarks released in advance of a Tuesday speech sponsored by Third Way, a Democratic think tank.

So let’s gut entitlement spending! – Oh, I slay me. Like that will ever happen under a Democratic Congress.  Likewise, cutting defense spending in this current atmosphere would be not so much touching the third rail for Democrats as it would be licking it.  That leaves tax hikes… which we all know was the goal all along.  Odd how that always seems to be the answer for Democratic politicians, particularly when what’s at stake is keeping public sector unions* happy.  Keeping all that in mind, let me offer a counter-proposal.  My alternative is that we flip Congress in November (which explicitly includes replacing Steny Hoyer with Charles Lollar); burn away entitlement spending all the way down to bedrock, with a grand, Chris Christie-like indifference to whether this makes us more loved; maybe trim some of the defense budget back; and not raise taxes at all.

And, oh yes, propose and pass a budget.  I cannot believe that the Democrats think that lowering the bar of better governance that low was a good idea.

Moe Lane

*In a happier world, ‘public sector union’ would be an oxymoron.  If not evidence of a psychotic break.

Crossposted to RedState.