First of all I encourage your clients and the others you talk to to indeed take a moment to stop and take a well needed breath. It will fill them and give them a moment to reflect on all that is great about our nation and for all they have to be grateful. Time will tell how much relief our present course will bring.

Yes I was talking about income taxes going up for some and down for most while certainly FICA increases will hit most. Unfortunately when you overspend, as your clients well know, eventually the bills have to be paid. From this point we diverge from what is to what we may feel ought to be. Here fact, fantasy, and wishful thinking have a way of often intertwining and become difficult to discern.

The previous administration followed a policy of cut taxes and spend which could be described as borrowing to spend our way out of a surplus. During all those years when many voiced concern about our escalating national debt and rising deficits I never once heard concern from those, like yourself so concerned about our current deficit spending, for the prospects of a loss of freedom from the expansion in deficits and debt.

My deficit spending is a pursuit of liberty for all while yours is a threat to the freedom of all Americans. There is ample reason for concern for the implications of our deficits and our national debt. Raising taxes has an economic impact.

Yet to frame this issue as one of fiscal responsibility and personal freedom vs. lack of fiscal responsibility and loss of freedom is an emotional leap that I consider unwarranted by historical context and counter productive to our need to work together, as well as contentious siblings may endeavor to do, to find common ground based in our common love for our nation and our equally revered individual freedoms.

Secondly, the increase will eventually be much larger if we are to rely on tax revenues to pay off the huge increase in our national debt due to the “lets borrow and spend our way out of this crisis” mentality in Washington. And if future taxes don’t skyrocket to those needed to pay off FDR’s similar expansion of government (the top bracket went to 63% and eventually to 90%) then they fear a resurgence of inflation, similar to what we saw in the 70′s.

Most of my clients, and others I talk to, who are angry are much more concerned about the future consequences of the expansion of government and the loss of freedom inherent in that expansion. Their concern is much greater than a 13% increase in their taxes. Most of them would breathe a sigh of relief if they thought that was the full extent of the policy shifts and spending they see happening.

Yet today returning to the same level, following a ten year period of negative growth of the stock market and declining real earnings for most Americans, is regarded by some as the ascent of socialism and justification for armed revolt.

I appreciate the conservative ethos but isn’t it prudent and conservative to manage your emotions and keep issues in perspective? You may start sounding like a raving liberal.

I have no problem with tax rates for higher earners going up. And yes, my family is included in that demographic. It is patriotic to pay taxes. If no one paid taxes, how could our nation support the military in which I proudly served? I have no problem sharing with fellow Americans who are down on their luck due to no fault of their own, and there are plenty of those. I also realize that my position is not popular in western SD.