 "'How will we pay for the tax cut?' I laugh when I hear that question because it’s so obviously illogical. If the government were to cut taxes, say, by lowering rates or outright repeal, people would simply be free to hold on to money they otherwise would have sent to the IRS under threat of punishment. Allowing them to keep that money requires no expenditure ... In the most basic sense, a tax cut costs nothing. What people who ask that question really mean is: How will the revenue forgone be made up? Why do they care? Because they don’t want the government to have to cut spending. Tax cuts don’t cost money; government programs do. The demand that tax cuts be paid for rests on the claim that government distribution of other people’s resources – euphemistically called “spending” – is sacrosanct ... This is important because when we talk the language of paying for tax cuts we adopt an outlook to which statists implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) subscribe, namely, the view that all income belongs to the State and that any measure that lets us keep some is just another form of spending."
Sheldon Richman
" Paying for Tax Cuts? Whose money is it?", The Freeman Online
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