Frank Luntz- "People don't care what the size of government is"

[King]

If we had a national referendum on spending cut propositions they'd all fail.

[All Along The Watchtower]

If we had a national referendum on spending cut propositions they'd all fail.

The sheeple are too dumb to know what's good for them. They voted for NOBAMA, remember? (Or did they? ACORN definitely helped...)

[Maxwell]

I have an idea for a simplified personal income tax.  It goes as follows

$0-50,000 : 10%
$50-200k: 20%
$200-400k: 30%
$400-$1m: 40%
$1m+: 40%

We then eliminate all deductions and replace them with one deduction: 10% of income up to $100,000 can be deducted by placing into a tax savings account at their local bank for one year.  Thus, the real brackets would be:

$0-50,000 : 0%
$50-200k: 10%
$200-400k: 20%
$400-$1m: 30%
$1m+: 40%

After the first year, everyone can simply withdraw their savings plus interest annually from their income of year prior and replace it with the new amount so people making less than 50k would actually pay a slightly negative tax rate due to the interest payment they receive. I believe having the first $50,000 of every American's income be "tax-free" would eliminate the need for any of the other deductions, even ones like property and state taxes.  At least, for anyone who couldn't afford to pay it.

50,000 might be too high of a barrier, but otherwise, I like the idea of this.

[DemPGH]

People want small government except for health care, Social Security, the military, education, transportation, and a few other things.

In other words, they don't actually want small government.

I was going to say almost the same thing.

People want government to work for them. And when one looks at the right's desire to combine religion and government, and the defense budget, the right does not oppose government. They just want it to work for a different class and group of people than what most are.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

If we had a national referendum on spending cut propositions they'd all fail.

Didn't we do that? Unspecified spending cuts lost to a targeted millionaire tax by about 51-48 or so.