Harbeson blows up Gov. Daniels on the "morality" of taxes and deficits

Or maybe dissects would be a better word...

From the second half of Debbie Harbeson's most recent essay in the Jeff/NA News-Tribune...

She runs with a recent quote from Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels-- in response to a possible tax to counter the deficit resulting from the new health care "reform":

“This is going to be an immorally — and I choose that word carefully — immorally huge burden we’re about to place on our children. I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

This is an amazing statement that demands much more explanation....there must be a specific number inside his head that clearly defines the moral limit for a tax burden forced upon citizens. One cent more and we’re in immoral territory. So what is that limit?...

Knowing this number would be great news because we could at least quit fighting over the amount that’s morally proper to take from people without their consent. But I don’t understand why he didn’t tell us the number.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not numerical. Maybe Daniels meant that this will be an “immorally huge” tax burden because health care is not a moral and proper government expenditure. In other words, a deficit-inducing expenditure can be moral if it’s spent on the “right” items like, say, a preemptive war in a far-off land.

But wait. It can’t depend upon a particular expenditure because Daniels was part of an administration that passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act....

So what else could it be? Who knows, but reviewing his quote above, I see that he said he chose the word “immoral” carefully.

If this is true and since he didn’t speak of morality when his party was increasing deficits, it appears that he chooses to use it when it benefits him and his political party. Therefore the only conclusion I can make is that, for him at least, tax burden morality must be dependent on who controls the spending....