Advocates of limited government often worry about how to maintain republican government and freedom if a substantial portion of the population don’t pay taxes and are net beneficiaries of government largesse.

Lately, it seems like a lot of the advocates of bigger government and higher taxes don’t pay their own taxes — like Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Governor David Paterson’s top aide, Democratic National Convention staffers, Al Sharpton, and so on.

Now the Washington Post has found another one:

Since joining the D.C. Council two years ago, Michael A. Brown has become the chief advocate for raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents, arguing that those who earn at least $250,000 a year are not paying their share.

Yet Brown and his wife have failed to pay the property taxes on a Chevy Chase home assessed at $1.4 million, according to public records. Brown, who earns more than $300,000 a year, owes the District $14,263 for property taxes, the records show.

I guess it’s easy to support higher taxes if you don’t intend to pay them. But I suggest that Brown bite the bullet, recruit Daschle, Franken, Norton, and their colleagues, and form a new organization:

Non-Taxpayers for a Tax Hike

Non-Taxpayers for a Tax Hike is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Pat Michaels and I have written an op-ed on the climate change bill due for a vote tomorrow in Congress, and our opinions on its provisions are summarized pretty well there. In short, the bill appears to offer very little in the way of reduced global warming in return for harm to the domestic economy and to international relations.

Yesterday’s New York Times energy and environment section (online) contains an article picking up on the increasingly harmful trade-related parts of the bill. Apparently the House Ways and Means Committee is trying to assert language that would make imposing carbon tariffs more likely than did the original Energy and Commerce Committee bill, bad enough that it was.

So what say you, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a powerful voice on trade?

[Rangel] downplayed the significance of his proposals. “I don’t think there will be many changes there,” he said. “There are just provisions in there that deal with trade and the poor. It’s not changes, it’s just vacuum.”

Assuming the quote was not taken out of context, for the leading House voice on trade to be so dismissive of important (if somewhat under-the-radar) provisions is irresponsible to say the least.

Charles Rangel Keeps a Cool Head is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

As I warned in my “deferral” video, the president’s proposal to increase the tax burden on U.S. companies competing in global markets is horribly misguided. The White House has now been put on notice by high-tech executives that they will be compelled to move jobs out of America if this destructive policy is adopted.

Bloomberg reports:

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits. “It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.” 

…Ballmer is one of 10 U.S. software company executives pushing back against the tax proposals in meetings today with White House officials including Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and the heads of congressional committees such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat. …In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers. …Ballmer said…fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.

High-Tech Companies Warn White House about Tax Hike is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog