Through Stealthy Back-Door Fees
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But the states – and local communities – can't run deficits. Whether dealing with a massive drop in tax revenues as a result of a recession, or gaps they created by pandering to voters with endless tax cuts, they have three ways to go. They can: a) cut services, which is politically unpopular and also can lead to situations such as in Texas, most of which is on fire after it slashed firefighting budgets; b) make up the gap with federal funds, as so many conservative governors who rail about federal spending are happy to do; or c) hike the fees their citizens pay for government services – fees for everything from motor vehicle registration to hunting licenses and user fees for recreational areas.
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That conservatives actually favor “limited government” and low taxes remains a central myth in our political discourse – one that most Americans, and virtually all of the legacy media buy into. But the reality is that they may have an ideological preference for smaller government, but, like all politicians, they really like getting elected. And, as pollsters and political scientists have long known, Americans only find the idea of “limited government” appealing as an abstract idea. When you get into the specific services the government performs – putting out fires, patrolling the streets, inspecting our food, educating our kids, keeping polluters from trashing the environment and a thousand other things – people really like most, if not all, of what the government does.
This well-known truth is why, political rhetoric aside, the share of our economy represented by government spending has varied by only very small margins since the 1950s, regardless of which party held Congress or the White House. When conservatives push tax cuts for high earners and corporations, they're effectively raising taxes – and fees – on the rest of us.
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And because so many Americans have drunk deeply of the “limited government” Kool-Aid, we also end up picking up more costs out-of-pocket – we don't get the same bang for our dollar as do citizens of other wealthy countries. In 2007, we paid 7.5 percent of our economic output less in taxes than the average of OECD countries, but citizens of the other wealthy countries got a lot more for their tax dollars than we did – free or very low-cost health care, college educations, better unemployment benefits, job training and the list goes on.
http://www.alternet.org/story/152364/how_%22small_government%22_conservatives_raise_your_taxes_through_stealthy_%27back-door%27_fees?page=1
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