This past week Sen. John Kerry explained that tax increases are necessary due the current federal government's revenue shortfall (less citizen income, less income tax revenues). This all-too-common view assumes the moral right of government to a constantly rising income stream when neither businesses nor families enjoy such a right. Businesses and families have to live in economic reality; most governments — state and local as well as federal — don't.
When governments spend every last cent by fiscal year-end, fail to pass budgets, and repeatedly fail to set aside rainy-day funds, that is financial mismanagement. The solution isn't raising taxes that only sustain further mismanagement. It's to fire incompetent managers and their political bosses. That's a non-partisan issue at every level of government in 2012.
Charles Clough, Bel Air