Revenues for a shrinking government

IBD:

The secretary of the Treasury says taxes must be raised on small business so the federal government can stay big. With that breathtaking statement, he helpfully mapped out the key difference between the parties.

While testifying Wednesday before the House Small Business Committee, Timothy Geithner told Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., that hiking taxes on small businesses is the only "alternative" that will allow "a balanced approach to reduce our fiscal deficits."

"If you don't touch revenues," Geithner said, "you have to shrink the overall size of government programs, things like education, to levels that we could not accept as a country."

Some factions just won't accept shrinking the size of government. Most in them run in the same tight circles as Geithner. Never hearing anything other than support for increasing the size of government, they assume that's what Americans want.

But quite a few Americans have been wanting to cut government for decades, and that number is growing as the almost intractable problems created by overspending have become more obvious.

...

Here is the answer Republicans should give. We should open up drilling in ANWR, and offshore regions of Alaska as well as the Atlantic and Pacific coast and other federally controlled land.

That will create thousands of jobs and generate royalty revenue that can be dedicated to reducing the deficit and support the payment of Social Security. The estimated royalty income to the government is around a trillion dollars and it could be more because we are getting much better at extracting energy from shale formations.

Why are Democrats looking to mess with job creators in order to squeeze revenue when this obvious source is setting there and it is relatively pain free? The same amount of oil is going to be produced somewhere in this world and we might as well do it where we create jobs and revenue.