After reworking taxes, let’s start fixing D.C.

even more of our money and possibly motivate more people who are now dependent on Washington to enjoy the fruits of liberty, a job and the dignity that goes with supporting one’s self and one’s family.

That would be real reform, but it may be easier to kick a drug or smoking habit than to wean some people from government.

Too many have bought into the fiction that government can solve everything, when history has shown that it can solve very little. One does not have to look far for evidence of this.

In some U.S. states and in countries where smaller, less intrusive government has been tried, less costly government works. Think Singapore, which has an unemployment rate around 2 percent because the country has no welfare for able-bodied people, and Hungary, which has cut corporate taxes from 19 percent to 9 percent and is experiencing economic growth approaching 4 percent.

Think America when the tax cuts advocated by John F. Kennedy and Reagan produced economic booms.

Now that the tax code has been “overhauled,” the next step should be to overhaul government.

It has far exceeded the boundaries set for it by the Constitution. As a result, people have come to expect more from government than it can, or should, deliver, which has led to lower expectations for what citizens can achieve for themselves.

One of the biggest promoters of selfreliance was America’s 30th president, Calvin Coolidge. Among many of his pronouncements about government, taxes and individual persistence was this gem: “A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.”

The Republican tax plan may unlock a few of the chains on those who have been its servants.

Now it’s time for the servants to put those chains on Washington and reduce its size and out-of-control spending.