a concentrated benefit to the one doing the taking and redistributing. Cutting taxes produces a much more diffuse benefit.

FFS, I shouldn't have to tell you the government is not a person and does not make decisions like one. Show me a correlation between tax rates and benefits to individual politicians, or admit it's diffuse as all Hell. Oh, wait:

Having the ability to take

Well then, since that's always present, we seem to have reached agreement that actually using it is unnecessary for a given politician. Nor, I would say, do we need additional reasons to justify implied taxation threats in a world where the USA is deep in debt.