A government of undelegated powers

''Taxpayer Democracy'' was born in the 1970s, the golden age of libertarian solutions. The movement had no think tanks yet. Just thinkers.

"Can we replace runaway government with runaway tax cuts, and package it so voters are clamoring to climb aboard?"

So far, it seems to be just myself, libertarian talk jock Lowell Ponte, and Ponte's listeners. Consider joining us.

''Taxpayer Democracy'' was born in the 1970s, the golden age of libertarian solutions. The movement had no think tanks yet. Just thinkers.

As a management consultant (my day job, as they say), I'm always looking for ways to create ''spontaneous'' positive results — like Profit Centers for my business clients. If you do Profit Centers correctly. then employees start increasing profits entirely on their own. It's self-generating. You don't have to remind them; just pay them and get out of their way.

Can we do the same with taxes and government spending? Can we propose a policy that creates ''spontaneous'' tax and spending cuts, by simply letting people do what they already want to do, rewarding them for doing it, and staying out of their way?

Can we replace runaway government with runaway tax cuts, and package it so voters are clamoring to climb aboard?

It's already been done, two decades ago, by Lowell Ponte.

Taxpayer Democracy would empower each taxpayer, by allowing them to specify where every dollar of their taxes will be spent. You could do it right on your tax return.

What clinched it for me, the words I most remember reading, is — at the extremes — some people would direct all their money to welfare programs, some entirely to the military, some entirely to nothing (spending reductions).

Perfect!

We'd have something positive to sell, across the entire political spectrum — and could also expose attackers as explicitly wanting to spend tax dollars against the will of the people. But we retain representative government, instead of Perot's pure democracy.

Here's my small contribution to what Ponte developed. Ours is a government of delegated powers. That means we can also UNdelegate power. What Congress cannot do — is incapable of doing — is set priorities within a fixed budget.

We can't fire them, not as a body. The only other alternative is to change their job description. Undelegate. Most folks understand proper delegation, from what they see in the workplace. Management retains its oversight or policy powers, but delegates the implementing.

Taxpayers, as management, would determine the spending priorities — by category — Congress would budget the details and programs within each category.

The total size of the military budget would be set by taxpayers. Congress must work within that number. Likewise with welfare programs. Likewise with Congressional Operations — if we cut that back, do they reduce staff or their own salaries? Overall spending is capped, indirectly, by how many dollars are specified to ''nothing.''

Technically, ''nothing'' would be your choice of tax cuts or deficit/debt reduction, or whatever mix of those two you wanted. Let's put that debate to rest, too.

Do the math. There would be tax cuts every year, if you believe many people would allocate dollars to tax cuts. The tax cuts might be small, but they'd keep accumulating. Instead of a slowly growing Leviathan, we'd have — at the minimum — a slowly shrinking Leviathan.

The influence of money and lobbyists would dissipate, just from the sheer cost of lobbying the entire American public. We'd likely see increased hysteria mongering, not something I look forward to, but they'd be squabbling over slices of a shrinking pie.

We'd still have influence peddling, but based on persuasion — not buying off a handful of congresscritters.

If even this is too extreme for you, there's also a milder version. Fred Chittenden, occasional contributor to Liberty Issues, has a Taxpayer Directed Budget (TDB) on his web site.

Fred's version is complete with all the required forms that you can look at or print out — even a short form and a long form. With TDB, taxpayers have less flexibility. Starting with the President's budget, you could only shift dollars around, within a narrow range, between each spending category.

TDB allows only a small increase in the dollars allocated to National Debt repayment, but does allow you to ''vote'' a spending cut up to 25%. That may seem more reasonable to voters, on the surface, but the more ''extreme'' Taxpayer Democracy may be more marketable — because voters can reject either military or welfare spending entirely.

I have a question for my readers. Very few of you — if any — will be running for federal office. But if you were, could you run on this?

You could look liberals right in the eye, and tell them every penny of their taxes could go to welfare programs, if that's what they want. How could they object?

Same with conservatives and the military budget.

If you ran on Taxpayer Democracy, would it work for you?

Would it work for America?