Without questioning the legality, constitutionality, or fairness of the American tax structure, there are still basic points that should be considered.

For one thing, any time the government collects more in taxes than it needs, any time there is a surplus, it means that the people have been overtaxed. The tax rate should be altered, money should be returned to the people, or a combination of both. In a democratically elected representative Republic, there should be no argument or debate about this.

If they even notice, most people are willing to accept small overcharges in the name of a contingency fund simply because, when considering necessary revenue, it's almost impossible to hit the nail on the head at least a year ahead of time. There is nothing wrong with a slight overcharge to allow for unexpected spending on natural emergencies like hurricanes, flooding, fires, earthquakes and so forth. Entitlements like Social Security ran a small overcharge for years and no one noticed or complained.

Most new business ventures build-in as much as a five percent contingency factor to account for the unpredictable. As the company matures, this contingency is generally reduced.

But the federal government has another mechanism, much like a business might have in a line-of-credit with a bank. This mechanism is the ability to quickly borrow extra cash by selling Treasury securities on the open market. Through the sale of Treasury bonds, bills, notes and savings bonds of various amounts, interest rates and maturity—the government can produce extra cash almost overnight. It means running a currently unpopular deficit, but it's the honest way to generate extra revenue and, again, if the amounts are small the public will probably not even notice.

No matter how you look at it, it's the taxpaying public that foots the bill. Whether it's in the form of overpayments or debt, it's all tax money. Since pirating and plundering another nation's Treasury is supposed to be a thing of the past, the federal government has no other source of revenue than its own taxpaying public. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work in this "land of the free" and setting aside our "national interests" in the resources of other countries.

Most importantly

When our federal government begins talking about, actually bragging about surpluses in the hundreds of billions and trillions—then, there is something seriously wrong. The people should immediately perk up and move to civilian DefCon one or two.

When that same government begins to think and talk about these surpluses as a windfall bonus that it can spend wherever it chooses, whether for good cause or not—the public should immediately move to DefCon three or four.

Without any doubt whatsoever, it means that the government has usurped its privileges and should be considering a massive revision of the tax structure and refunds to the taxpaying public unless, of course, that government has become a totalitarian state—in which case it should be preparing to put down a revolution.

With that last point in mind, you might ask yourself just how much we need more defense spending, gun control, urban military maneuvers and a larger police force. Particularly, since there is no war and crime rates have dropped substantially. Just who is it that's going to come get us?