




One or the other. It's time to choose.

Daniel Henninger says that Barack Obama knows taxes define worldview. The GOP should offer voters an alternative.






Martin Kozlowski

This is about something bigger than deficit reduction. The deficit is dangerous. But raising taxes to cut the deficit is a bailout for the spenders—until proven otherwise.

Barack Obama knows that the fight over the Bush tax cuts isn't about anything as arcane as a cyclical correction or "the deficit." He understands that taxes define a worldview. Mr. Obama could not have been clearer about this in his early 2009 budget preview, "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise."

Mr. Obama said the middle class had been "playing by the rules," while those "at the commanding heights" had not, benefiting from "huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected." "It's a legacy of irresponsibility," he said, "and it is our duty to change it." He proposed "prudent investments" in health, education, infrastructure and clean energy. ObamaCare became one such "prudent investments."

This is tax policy by the sorcerer's apprentice. There is an alternative view.

The U.S. has never subscribed to the idea of a nation run by philosopher-kings. Even the Founders disassembled. The Obama White House, as with its new director of Medicare and Medicaid, Donald Berwick, is explicit in its belief that the smartest can design a nationwide health-care system for the rest—if the people will give them enough money to do so. And they could have designed a successful stimulus program—if the people had given them more than the piddling $862 billion they got.

This election and these times are a chance to put to the voters opposed visions of why we work and what we do with the money we earn.

If voters ultimately feel more secure with a Barack Obama and the like designing a national itinerary for some 300 million people in 50 states, then certainly one should vote for letting taxes rise now on one class of Americans and imposing a VAT next year on everyone. They need a whole lot of money, so give it to them to the horizon. We work, they decide.

The alternative vision is that to compete for the next 50 years, the U.S. is going to need a tax structure that keeps more of the nation's decisions about using its wealth in the hands—and minds—of millions of intelligent citizens, from any economic class. They work, they decide.

So: Extend the current tax rates for all and free everyone in an economy begging for the chance to be strong again. Yes, the U.S. economy will always be "strong," but it needs to be strong enough to take on all comers and win, which last time I looked was the real American way.

Write to henninger@wsj.com