It is repellent to hear people complacently discussing tax cuts as if they are just one of three options for using the surplus, and is in no way morally superior to spending or debt reduction. The nation's economic product is not the government's property.

The money got into the government's hands because the government extracted it from productive Americans, using tax rates that are too high because they extract too much. Projected surpluses are the result of substantial and chronic overtaxation.

In other words, after the people have been taxed trillions of dollars more than required to pay for all the vast current spending of the federal government — and after three quarters of this excess is then used to pay for additional government spending — it is still "too much" to return the remaining one-fourth to the people who have been overtaxed.

The argument that most of the tax cuts will go to "the rich" ignores the simple fact that the only people whose taxes can be cut are people who are paying taxes; millions of people in lower income brackets have been exempted. Silly talk about how much some people will "receive" from a tax cut ignores the fact that they are receiving nothing.

They are simply keeping money that they earned. Why should more money than needed stay in Washington, D.C., instead of remain with those who earned it? The principle doesn't change because of how many zeros there are in your income.