Supreme Logic: Don't Put Them In Charge of the Budget

The Supreme Court ruled today that a tax credit to school tuition organizations does not impact a tax payer and thus does not warrant giving the tax payer a standing with the court for bringing a case. The court's decision says that allowing a tax credit to a religious school does not constitute government endorsement of a religion, and does not violate the Constitutional proscription against the establishment of religion. This ruling does allow religious groups to direct money to their particular group and to receive a dollar for dollar deduction in their tax obligation. And this in no way is harmful, detrimental nor an imposition upon other tax payers (according to the Court, it appears).

Now I am not particularly bothered by people donating money to an educational organization, especially if it is limited to rational amounts, by rational I would see $500 to $1,000 dollars as reasonable upper limits. And yes, I am sure that most of the people who take advantage of this tax credit are getting an off-set on their tuition costs with the same said school tuition organizations for their respective children. Yes, it is a form of governmental support of religious organizations, and by many standards that is a violation of the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court over the last half century or so. That some of our strict original interpretation-ists justices are able to perform the mental gymnastics required to score a perfect landing on this decision, well that is just another illustration of the wonders that the human mind is capable of when it wants to justify its actions.

My issue with the justices is that their logic is flawed, and worse it is so obviously flawed. Oh, not on a legal basis explicitly (but there is the mental pivoting that they have to do there), but on the reality basis. I guess that it is possible that Supreme Court justices don’t have to abide by the physical laws of reality, but you would think they would not want to render a judgment that so easily exposes their lack of intelligence and common reasoning.

Let’s suppose that we take the justices’ decision and do the good-ole what-if analysis. You know, let’s see where it leads us and see if you think the justices are floating free of reality and un-tethered to logic.

The justices claim that a tax credit by one tax payer for something like a tuition donation does no harm to another tax payer. Note: they did not claim that the harm it did is minor or inconsequential; but that it had no import to the other tax payer. Thus they have no reason to be admitted to appeal to the government/courts to redress the harm.

Now let’s remove the limit of the donation; something the justices did not indicate was of consequence and thus we are free to modify without effect (their ruling would still apply). The donating tax payer determines that they will owe $10,000 in tax and will thus donate $10,000 to the school tuition organization. The donating tax payer will thus owe $0 in tax. Nothing!

But the other tax payers in the state (or country if we went national), would have to make up for that ‘missing’ state income. Now I know that $10,000 averaged over a large number of tax payers would not have a huge impact on any single individual, but it is a real impact since it is other than zero. It’s not Nothing!

Wait! There are other individuals who avail themselves of the school tuition organization tax-credit. So there is not one person but perhaps many. What if there were 10,000 donating tax payers. All of whom pay Nothing in taxes to the state/nation. That’s $100M dollars!! Even to a Supreme Court justice, I suspect that this is starting to sound like real-money. And if we turn to the other tax payers who have to cover the check then they may actually be impacted in some noticeable way, noticeable even to a Supreme Court justice.

Now to drive it home just a little more, let’s take all the tax-payers of a state except one. And let’s make the one, say the Supreme Court justice him/herself. Surely the justice would find if reasonable and rational for the entire tax burden of their state (or of the nation for that matter) to fall entirely upon their wallet. In fact, I think we need to tell Congress that we have a solution to their problem. We can solve the national budget problem, and everyone (except Supreme Court justices) will be fine. We just put the entire tax burden upon them. It can’t be illegal because they would have no standing for a law suit.

God, I hope no one in Congress reads this! They are just about bright enough to think this is a good idea. We already know that the justices think it is (except for the dissenters).
I think the blog at http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=2&subcatid=7&threadid=5281305#5281305 might have been useful here.