TAXES AND SPENDING

de facto

Liberals are leery of extending theBush tax cuts, just as conservativeswant to see them made permanent.Give the government money,say fiscal hawks, and it will spend allof it and more. Backing up the conservativeargument are statistics thatshow that government—federal,state, and local—accounts for about0.33 of every dollar that is spent inthe United States. Conservatives alsopoint to a report from the CongressionalBudget Office, which concludesthat failure to continue the taxcuts will amount to a taxincrease for Americans of more than$1 trillion over the next 10 years.