Taxation has always been one of the most controversial political topics. The Democrats have been highly successful in promoting class warfare through manipulation of the tax code.

When I played football in high school, we had practiced during the week for a game with a conference rival Neenah. Our coaches told us “Neenah is really good at ball fakes.” I should have listened more carefully. On one of the first plays of the game, they sent their fullback through the line. Our middle linebacker stopped him in his tracks. “Good tackle Billy” I muttered through my mouthguard. He instantly replied “he doesn’t have the ball.” I looked to my right to see the ball-carrier legging it around the end.

The Democrats have achieved their own end run. They get the people fighting among themselves about who is or isn’t paying enough in taxes, but ignore the fact that the real fiscal problem is that the federal government is spending too much money in ways the Constitution never authorized. This tendency creates the reality that even current confiscatory tax rates are scarcely enough to fund all the government programs.

Let’s examine this more carefully. Almost every liberal politician says that the rich in this country aren’t paying their fair share. Nobody ever defines what a “fair share” is, but the claim always generates a fist-shaking visceral response. Democrats have played the envy card like a Stratovarius for their own political benefit. Yet when we overlay rhetoric with actual facts, we find something different.

The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.9 percent average rate, nearly eight times higher than the 3.3 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. The top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent. So, the top one percent of earners pay nearly 46%, while the bottom half pay little or nothing. This is not fair! It has the legislative consequence that people paying nothing will dictate policy to those actually paying for their benefits!

If I were debating liberal politicians, I would wield this statistical data against them, pointing out that if we all paid our fair share, the top would pay less and the bottom more. But to add to this imbalance, it must be noted that many rich people are very philanthropic, giving to support hospitals, libraries, school endowments, along with a host of other civic causes. Yet, none of this charity counts, only what is divvied out in taxes.

During the 2000 Republican primaries I was a supporter of Alan Keyes. I listened to his New Hampshire stump speech numerous times. Keyes tells a story about the amendment to create the federal income tax in 1913. He starts out by saying that before this time, the US national debt was paid from the collection of tariffs and excise taxes. The initial bill was introduced as a tax on the wealthy.

The debates in the Senate had some dissenters arguing that if we started an income tax, some day average tax payers would be paying five percent. They were laughed at. The opposition said that a revolution would occur if average people were taxed at five percent!

The initial brackets began at $3,000, where you had to pay one percent and, for the super wealthy, it could be as high as six percent. Initially, only about three percent of the population was impacted. Within a few years the brackets grew astronomically. Before long, average voters were paying. By 1941 they started withholding, knowing that people were less likely to notice how much they paid if they never got to receive their full paycheck earnings in the first place.

Now consider our current political situation. VP Harris wants to create a new tax on unrealized capital gains amid cheers from her constituents. Get the rich! How soon will it be before that tax filters down to middle income people like it did with the original income tax? Hypothetically, seizing the estimated $5 trillion in current wealth from America’s billionaires would be enough to run the federal government for about eight months, based on what was spent in fiscal year 2021. What does this tell you? There aren’t enough super rich for such a tax to solve budget problems over the long run. One can only wonder if this is merely a virtue signal to make people feel better about their own tax situation.

Many voters in this election are completely oblivious to the fact that the current tax rates end at the end of 2025, unless they are extended. Since the Trump tax reduction of 2017 so heavily targeted the middle class, more people will see large tax increases. Of course, many people will deny this because ideology always displaces factually, but reality will hit them between the eyes when they see less on their first 2026 paychecks.

Our fourth president, James Madison, often known as the father of our Constitution, makes this statement concerning the Cod Fishery Bill, dated Feb. 6, 1792, referring to a proposed bill to subsidize cod fisherman:

"If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress ... were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundation, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America ..."

It seems obvious that the real deficit problem is not because some people aren’t paying their fair share, but that the government spends too much money on things where it had no constitutional mandates.