Slam the door on tax proposals

Dallas Morning News | Steve Brown:

"President Bush's tax reform advisory commission is suggesting that we slash the home mortgage interest deduction and eliminate the home property tax deduction. Why not raise interest rates to 20 percent and put an extra $6 per gallon tax on gasoline at the same time? As long as we are going to trash the economy, let's do a complete job of it. "

A good example of a straw man. No one is seriously proposing that we should do all of those things. Why does Steve Brown need to lump them together to argue his case? Maybe because cutting the mortgage interest deduction by itself would not spell the doom Steve Brown would like us to believe. Maybe to deflect attention from the fact that the status quo is unsupportable. The fact is, the huge federal budget deficits have to be addressed. We can postpone the day of reckoning only at the expense of increasing the ultimate pain. Some combination of spending cuts and tax hikes is inevitable. The home mortgage interest deduction cannot be spared just because touching it will cause discomfort. Discomfort is a given. The hangover we face can't be avoided by continuing to party like it's 1999.