Dingel's tax-and-spend attitudes

If you have not gone to www.vote-smart.org, you should. This is a great site which details the votes and positions of the various members of Congress. For instance, I have been reading through the positions of my Congressional Representative, John Dingel. A few items caught my attention. Rep. Dingel wants to increase spending in defense, education, environment, homeland security, international aid, law enforcement, medical research, national parks, public health, scientific research, transportation, and emergency preparedness. Of these, he wants to "greatly increase" funding for education, environment, homeland security, law enforcement, medical research, national parks, public health services, scientific research, and emergency preparedness.

How would he pay for this? First off, he supports a personal income tax increase which would, by his accounting, generate $63 billion this year. For taxes, he wants to eliminate taxes for those families making under $25,000 a year - not a difficult position considering that families making under $25,000 a year pay almost no taxes as it is thanks to President Bush's recent tax cuts - but increase personal income taxes on families making over $150,000 a year. He also wants to increase taxes on alcohol, capital gains, cigarettes, corporations, and inheritances. In other words, he wants to increase nearly every tax that the government charges except, apparently, gasoline taxes - which is odd considering his recent positions on carbon taxes.