I am a progressive in the sense that I believe that money from taxes need to be used to create a level playing field for all people with basic services either provided free (education and medical) or subsidized (communications, electricity, public transport).

If you had a complete working knowledge of our nation's monetary system (not meant as a disparagement) you'd find the truth even worse. One of my primary goals in writing is to spread that knowledge as widely as possible.

The connection between tax collections and federal spending is almost non-existent. That connection went away as long ago as '34 when FDR ended the convertibility of dollars to gold and Nixon nailed the coffin shut on the gold standard internationally in '71.

Congress, the monopoly issuer of net US dollars, can afford anything that can be resourced in the private sector, even without a dime of revenue. It literally creates money from thin air when it spends and taxes are destroyed by balancing against the debt when they are collected.

This means that deficit spending is required unless we wish to allow our government to drain resources and labor from the economy without payment. Only deficit spending can supply dollars needed to retire private sector debt or be net saved as a store of value.

The "national debt" is actually our accumulated savings represented in Treasury bonds since our nation was founded, not a burden on future productivity. The government's red ink is our only source of black ink that doesn't require balancing against private bank debt.

When you speak in terms of "tax dollars" you are using the language of the liars and con artists that have created a mass illusion of our sovereign currency-issuing government having the same restraints that we have in our own budget process.