Most of us on the Right have known this innately for years – how?  Just look at budgets.  At the town level, at the city level, at the county, or State or Federal level – how often have you ever seen a budget DECREASE?  Even a slowing of rises are decried by those whose favorite program is "a cut".

Now, from the Wall Street Journal, some research shows what we have known all the time; my paraphrase is this:

A raising of an existing tax, or the birth of a new tax revenue stream is like a hit of crack to the vast majority of politicians and Progressives; it is never enough and they only want more and more to support their spending habit. 

Higher Taxes Won’t Reduce the Deficit (emphasis mine):

The claim here, echoed by endless purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington, is that these added revenues—potentially a half-trillion dollars a year—will be used to reduce the $8 trillion to $10 trillion deficits in the coming decade. If history is any guide, however, that won’t happen. Instead, Congress will simply spend the money.

In the late 1980s, one of us, Richard Vedder, and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University co-authored a often-cited research paper for the congressional Joint Economic Committee (known as the $1.58 study) that found that every new dollar of new taxes led to more than one dollar of new spending by Congress. Subsequent revisions of the study over the next decade found similar results.

We’ve updated the research. Using standard statistical analyses that introduce variables to control for business-cycle fluctuations, wars and inflation, we found that over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending…

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My, how connections can be made!  So, what’s the connection with this T-Shirt and the "Patriotic Millionaires" that Jeff Chidester and I discussed this morning on WGIR?

You know how I can tell this is a Progressive idea, vs just "Patriotic Millionaires"?  First, just look at some of the names on their list:

• Michael Steinhardt
• Gail Furman
• Guy Saperstein,
• Ben & Jerry Ice Cream co-founder, Ben Cohen

Not exactly rock-ribbed conservatives in this bunch, eh?  Also, the tactics:

• A collective mentality with an insistence that ALL pay – not just the willing. As Chris over at RightWingNews put it in playing at being a liberal: "Why should I pay more unless they force me to pay more?".  They simply wish to achieve the Progressive ideal of the top paying the entire freight for society’s bill of Government.
• No indication that the other side of the equation, spending, be addressed.
• An unwillingness to "just do it" and send a check if they really felt this strongly about "be Patriotic – send money!". 

And the most stunning part – who was doing the organizing of these folks: "The Patriotic Millionaires campaign, pulled together quickly by the Agenda Project in New York City,".  Once again, we meet up with Erica Payne (who said "This is not an orchestrated campaign").

Yeah, totally believable, that.  Let’s see what she says about herself – not exactly all that altruistic in my reading:

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