Taxes and Spending: A Moral Gulf

As a die-hard supporter of the Pittsburgh Penguins professional ice hockey team, I was, like every other supporter, ecstatic when it became official that city, county and state authorities approved a massive bond issuance to finance a new arena for the team a few years ago. The deal prevented the team's threatened move to Kansas City, a city with hardly any hockey culture. It came as no surprise, of course, because these days professional sports franchise owners easily have their way with local governments when demanding new facilities.

More importantly, though, part of the arena's financing would come from newly legalized slot machine casinos that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania legalized to generate new revenues in a cash-strapped economy. On one shore of Pittsburgh's three rivers, just a stone's throw away from a world-class science museum popular among children, local residents could feed their gambling addictions in a new magnet for crime - and thereby help pay for the new arena. As a fan, I was happy to know my team would stay put - and win a championship one year later - but I also felt dirty knowing the means to that end.

The arena illustrated the paradox of the Reagan-era conservatism that has persisted in today's political culture: with a refusal to raise taxes as a means to finance growing government outlays including large public facilities like arenas and stadiums, you put pressures on governments to find revenue in other, less savory places. Conservatism as a means of preventing "big government" only forces governments to look elsewhere for the funds needed to pay for programs: so-called immoral activities, corporations, and in recent years, other countries with whom the United States shares few common interests.

Take, for example, an idea being pushed, ironically, by Democrats in Congress to legalize Internet gambling as a way of raising just $42 billion over 10 years. Such a sum is minuscule to the size of the federal budget deficit. But the new willingness of Congress to legalize Internet gambling - the addiction for which is probably more difficult to prevent because of the Internet's dispersion and anonymity - shows Congress has reached its last resort in an election year and has run out of ideas to combat real waste in government spending.