One of the principal problems with American journalism these days is not simply its ideology, its ignorance or its even outright bias. Rather, it’s its uncritical acceptance of the worst of the left’s philosophical structural framework. Exhibit A is this lede from a piece in the Dallas Morning News yesterday:
Tax breaks Americans savor are costing Uncle Sam big
Dallas physician Steven Davidoff doesn’t fit the stereotype of someone who needs a housing subsidy: raised in Plano , educated at Tulane University Medical School, working as a pulmonary critical care physician.
But Davidoff, 35, is like tens of millions of other Americans who benefit from tax policies that reduce the cost of buying a home. Most of them are like him – affluent enough to buy a home without help, but happy to use a tax deduction for mortgage interest, even though it will cost the federal treasury about $103 billion in lost revenue this year.
And there you have it: the complete, uncritical parroting of the leftist meme that everything belongs to the government, and that the taxes you don’t pay are somehow being ripped from Washington’s insatiable maw and selfishly kept in your pocket.
Have we really come to this?To read Dave Michaels’s story, the answer appears to be yes.
The mortgage interest deduction is the third-most- expensive tax break, estimated to cost only slightly less than the tax treatment of employer-sponsored health care ($110 billion) and 401(k) retirement plans ($106 billion), according to figures from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
Added together, the more than 200 tax breaks will cost the federal government about $1.1 trillion this year – about $200 billion less than the budget deficit. They are also known as tax expenditures, because they work just like other government expenditures.
Truly, this is state-controlled journalism at its finest, pleading the government’s case against the people. And the best part is, it required absolutely no pressure from the powers that be — no FTC intervention to “save” journalism, no FCC power grab of the internet. All it required was the same thing that has brought contemporary American mainstream journalism to its current low estate: a weak, simpering sensibility better befitting a group of politically correct fourth graders instead of the once-fearsome fourth estate.
“This country needs to come to grips with the reality that we have limited resources,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which computes the cost of tax legislation for Congress.
“We have to make hard choices, and tax expenditures are getting close to a free pass compared to explicit spending,” Kleinbard said.
And there you have it — what’s ours is ours and what’s yours is negotiable, brought directly to you from the tax overlords to the breakfast table, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.