Thomas L. Friedman has an opinion column in today's New York Times that really has my dander up. Excerpt:

Democrats have been groping for a way to counter George Bush's maniacal tax cuts, which are designed to shrink government and shift as many things as possible to the market. May I make a suggestion? When you shrink government, what you do, over time, is shrink the services provided by federal, state and local governments to the vast American middle class. I would suggest that henceforth Democrats simply ask voters to substitute the word "services" for the word "taxes" every time they hear President Bush speak.

That is, when the president says he wants yet another round of reckless "tax cuts," which will shift huge burdens to our children, Democrats should simply refer to them as "service cuts," because that is the only way these tax cuts will be paid for—by cuts in services. Indeed, the Democrats' bumper sticker in 2004 should be: "Read my lips, no new services. Thank you, President Bush."

The only way to pay for tax cuts is to cut services? This might be true in a utopian never-never-land where everything the government does is done efficiently, where there is no waste, where there are no entrenched bureaucrats or sub-optimal employees on the payroll biding their time until they can collect their tidy pensions. But it isn't true in our very imperfect world.

Yes, I am aware that private business/industry can and often does operate inefficiently and wastefully, allowing some people who are only marginally competent to stay on board. The difference is that private business has some incentive to be, if not a model of productivity, at least a little better than their competition. Government has no competition, and therefore, no incentive to do better. So they often don't.

That's the reality that Tom Friedman hasn't accepted. Republicans have long claimed that government is less efficient than the private sector, and higher levels of government (i.e. federal agencies) are less efficient than lower levels (i.e. municipalites). Even Al Gore, while Vice President, took on the task of "reinventing government" to eliminate some of the waste. Who can forget his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, smashing a glass ashtray with a hammer? I don't remember the specific point of that exercise, but his general point was that the government pays a ridiculous amount of money for everyday items by having them custom manufactured instead of buying them off the shelf like everyone else does.

Which is part of the point of tax cuts - to trim some of the waste. It's like going on a diet - if you eat a little less, your body will use some of your fat for extra energy, or at the very least you won't add any fat to what's already there. And where the government, not to mention many individuals, is concerned, money is like closet space - if you have it, you'll use it, whether it's necessary or not.

I learned this financial principle during a several-year stretch of limited income. Some weeks, paying for groceries was difficult, and my electricity got turned off once for non-payment until I worked out a deal with them and got it back the next day. But my son and I were never homeless or hungry or without clothing. I was able to pay for the essentials by foregoing things like vacations to Florida, new cars, and cable TV. Now that I'm making more money, I can afford more things (I even took my first Florida vacation last March). But I haven't forgotten the lesson about living within my means. In contrast, there are many people earning great money who are in debt up to their eyeballs because they don't distinguishing between necessities and luxuries. They think their $1000-a-month leased Mercedes is an essential item because they need a car to get to work, but a new Ford for a $350 loan payment would do the job just as well.

So when Tom Friedman (or Bob Herbert or John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi) talks about service cuts as the only way to cut taxes, they're ignoring a fundamental truth: not all money spent is money well spent.

I suppose this is one of the reasons why, though I'll probably never be a Republican, I'm no longer a Democrat either. I have absolutely no problem with my taxes paying for social services, for example, but I sure as hell object to it being spent on some Washington weenie of limited usefulness. It's such a sensible distinction, but sadly, one that escapes Mr. Friedman.