2.4 Government Finance and Spending

2.4 Government Finance and Spending

All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. Government should not incur debt, which burdens future generations without their consent. We support the passage of a "Balanced Budget Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.

Well if anything ever said "smaller government" this is it. I find it strange that people look at this plank and see it as "extreme" when all it is stating is that the Constitution should be followed. How radical is it that government be constrained to those things which it is legally empowered to do?

One thing this plank does not do is say how the federal government would get its funding. Going back to the unamended Constitution the Feds would have to apportion their costs to the several states. That plan proved to be a little ambitious, apparently. As an almost Libertarians it seems that we cannot risk going back to that system when you consider the foreign threats. The world is a dangerous place, and we have real enemies. No matter the source of those enemies we cannot merely go home and pretend it all never happened and then hope they reciprocate.

The US must be able to maintain a strong military to counter those threats. This cannot be allowed to fall prey to the same things that made the original funding plan unworkable. Therefore I would suggest that a full scale adoption of the fair tax be added to the charter to remove this glaring oversight. The fair tax would level the playing field, be revenue neutral, abolish the IRS, and take away all the inherently unfair things about the massive tax code that causes so much political corruption.

As for debt, I agree in general, in that the government is taking on huge amounts of debt for no long term purposes, but rather to buy votes. I do think the government should be allowed to take on debt for specific projects. World War II paints a very graphic picture of the need of the government to be able to raise capital in the form of debt. A blanket "no debt" plank sounds good, but it is a naive understanding of finance. There will always be a problem with the government wishing to take on debt to buy votes, and it the reason why no platform can be anything more than a standard set of guidelines. Judgment will be required.

This means that even under Libertarian rule people will need to be ever vigilant. The major difference is that the Libertarian party welcomes such citizen oversight, whereas the other parties shun it.