Government tab paid at long last

In the midst of a campaign in which both major-party candidates are merrily promising more things the government is going to do for you and solemnly delineating the real and (mostly) imagined threats from which government is going to protect you, it might be useful to step back and develop a little perspective.

According to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, Wednesday, July 16, was Cost of Government Day. That is, the average American had to work until July 16 to pay his or her share of all the costs government imposes on us. This is the latest in the year that the day has fallen since 1992.

Spending and regulation together, then, consume 53.9 percent of national income.

It is not uncommon for people to complain or celebrate ironically about Tax Freedom Day, the day when we would (finally) be finished paying all our taxes to the national, state and local governments if government had taken every single bit of our income until that day. It usually falls in late April. Ohioans this year would have achieved such a day on April 17. And Ohio continues to maintain one of the nation's most oppressive state tax structures, something state bureaucrats deny but that study upon study (and plain old common sense) says is the case. But Norquist and his organization have refined the calculation a bit by including the extra costs the government imposes on us through regulations, price supports, tariffs and a whole host of interventions into the economy that reduce efficiency and cost us money.

Thus Americans for Tax Reform calculates that, at current levels, federal spending will cost us 83.7 days of the 365 days in a year, while state and local spending will cost us 50.5 days. Federal regulations, however, cost us 41.7 days a year, while state and local regulations cost 20.9 days, bringing the total to 196.8 days. And, as Norquist puts it, "the spending data is precise, the regulatory burdens are understated," which is almost certainly true.

"Permits and fines, bureaucracy and paperwork are consistently at the list of hardships businesses cite when talking about the obstacles to and costs of doing business," Ohio's Republican legislative leaders wrote in a news release last week. So, in response to that continued problem - but more likely because Democrats swept Republicans out of most statewide offices in the 2006 elections - the GOP leadership finally is getting around to addressing the problem. Senate President Bill Harris named Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina, and House Speaker Jon Husted named Rep. Jim Zehringer, R-Fort Recovery, to lead a task force on regulatory reform. For Ohio's bleak economic outlook, it hasn't come soon enough.

Nationally, as compared with when President Bush assumed office in 2001, federal spending consumes three more days of your life, while federal regulations (which had remained stable for the previous four years) take another full day. State and local spending consume another six days just since 2003.

Here's the kicker. The economy has grown by $2.9 trillion since 2003, and tax revenues have increased by $785 billion. But spending has grown much more sharply. "Had the federal government limited federal spending to grow only as rapidly as the economy since 2000, Norquist writes, "the budget would have been balanced by 2006 and in surplus today."

Can government that takes more than half the national income produced by productive and hard-working people be sustained much longer? We thought spending was too high in 2000.