The Arguments About Taxes

The Gadflyer: Ammo Dump has a series of simple points about how to counter arguments people should vote Republican to lower taxes.

A good place to start is to grant that nobody likes paying taxes. But there are a lot of things that we want government to do. You can rattle off the things conservatives support – highway construction, firefighters, cops, prisons, and most of all national defense (at current levels of funding, each American family needs to contribute about $5000 a year just for the Pentagon). Once it's established that the question isn't whether or not we're going to pay taxes, because of course we are, the question becomes how we can design the tax system to be as fair and effective as possible.

Across the ideological spectrum, Americans love government services but hate paying taxes. So when a conservative starts complaining that taxes are too high, a good way to argue back is to say, "OK, what do you want to cut? Do you want to cut defense spending? Do you want to cut spending on schools? Social Security? Medicare?" If they say something like "How about cutting welfare?" you can let them know that welfare, currently known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, comprises less than 1% of the federal budget.