The NY Slimes would never lie to us to promote their overt liberal agenda, would they?
Think again.
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Whose Welfare?
Best of the Web Today
BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, January 12, 2007
The New York Times mounts its favorite hobbyhorse, "income inequality," for a predictable editorial denouncing the Bush tax cuts. But what caught our eye was the first sentence:
<< The tax system in the United States is supposed to mitigate inequality. >>
It is? Says who? Not the Constitution, which in Article I, Section 8 establishes Congress's taxing authority:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes,
duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide
for the common defense and general welfare of the United
States.
The 16th Amendment, which authorizes Congress to tax incomes, does not stipulate any other purposes for which taxes may be levied, so Congress remains limited to those stipulated in Article I, Section 8--
"to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and
general welfare of the United States."
As the Internal Revenue Service Web site notes, Congress enacted the first (unconstitutional) income tax to pay Civil War expenses--i.e., for the common defense.
Now, granted, "general welfare" is a capacious term, and there is enormous room for disagreement over what it means. But one thing it clearly doesn't mean is to "mitigate inequality"--that is, to take money from someone with the express purpose of benefiting someone else. So the Times has in fact endorsed an anticonstitutional view of the purpose of the tax system, and it has done so without any apparent thought.
opinionjournal.com
nytimes.com
law.cornell.edu
law.cornell.edu
irs.gov |
