I'm all for small, inexpensive, efficient and very well run government...who isn't?
The problem isn't that, the problem is how to achieve that? Simply shrinking the government just to shrink it doesn't achieve anything.
The basic premise of 'small' government isn't reality but wishful thinking. A bunch of people running around doing what they like doesn't lead to an efficient market, it leads to fraud, theft and autocracy. Them thar's the reality of people on earth.
"...To Norquist, who loves being called a revolutionary, hardly an agency of government is not worth abolishing, from the Internal Revenue Service and the Food and Drug Administration to the Education Department and the National Endowment for the Arts. "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
thenation.com
"Starve-the-beast is a strategy of using budget deficits in order to force the government to reduce its spending; a timely example is the tax cutting policy under U.S. President George W. Bush. The word beast in the expression refers to the government and the programs it funds, and implies that these programs are destructive.
A current well-known proponent of starve-the-beast in the U.S. is Grover Norquist."
en.wikipedia.org
=========== Then, along with more and more and more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy and welfare for ExxonMobil et al you get stuff like the AMT. The Norquists of the world aren't looking for efficiency and efficacy, they're stealing from those who work for a living.
nytimes.com
September 24, 2005
Report Says Bush's Tax Cuts Will Cause Some to Pay More
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Over the next 10 years, Americans will not receive nearly $750 billion in tax cuts sponsored by President Bush because the cuts will be offset by the alternative minimum tax, a new report by Congressional tax specialists shows.
The report, prepared by the staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, said that from 2006 to 2015, Americans would pay as much as $1.1 trillion more under the alternative minimum tax, partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts.
The Bush tax cuts reduced the bill for millions of taxpayers to a level that will subject them to the alternative minimum tax instead of the standard tax rate. As a result, the report said, their tax savings would be reduced by a total of $739.2 billion over the 10 years.
Congress has passed a modest adjustment to the alternative minimum tax to allow more taxpayers to take advantage of the Bush tax cuts, but that expires at the year-end.
Even if it is extended, the report said, the alternative minimum tax would take away $628.5 million in tax savings, with $416.5 billion of that attributable to the Bush tax cuts over the 10 years.
George K. Yin, the joint committee's chief of staff, wrote that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 account for just under two-thirds of the increase in collections under the alternative tax. The report was prepared in response to a request from John Buckley, chief tax lawyer for Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Families with children who own their homes will be hit hardest by the increased alternative tax.
The Treasury Department said the "administration is as concerned as anyone about the growth of the A.M.T. and its effect on taxpayers" and that it supported the temporary adjustment.
The alternative tax is a "priority to be addressed by the President's Advisory Panel for Federal Tax Reform for the long term," said Taylor Griffin, a Treasury spokesman.
Republican tax specialists said Mr. Yin's report was accurate, but created a misleading impression. Mark A. Prater, chief tax lawyer for Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, said the root problem was not the tax cuts, but failure to index the alternative tax for inflation.
Mr. Prater also cited testimony by several tax specialists about inflation, including Leonard E. Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center. But Mr. Burman, in an interview yesterday, said that the design of the Bush tax cuts, not inflation, was the major reason the alternative tax produced more revenue after 2001.
The tax was initially enacted in 1969 to ensure that people making the equivalent of $1 million in today's dollars or more could not live tax-free. Because of changes in the law over the years, however, those making more than $1 million will pay little of the increased minimum tax, according to the Tax Policy Center. The original alternative minimum tax in 1969 limited the use of exotic tax deductions, like the oil depletion allowance.
But since then, Congress has moved to allow those exotic deductions, denying individuals their personal exemptions, deductions for state and local taxes and interest on home equity loans not used for home improvements. Some families are forced to pay the alternative tax even if they take only the standard deduction. Some medical bills also cannot be deducted under the alternative tax, forcing the seriously sick or injured to pay higher income taxes. Since early 1999, more than 100 members of Congress have publicly attacked the provision that raises the tax bills of the severely sick - so far without any effect.
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