Lip Reading For Amateurs

"Read my lips: No new taxes." Those words came from the father of best-selling author George W. Bush. While history has begun to reveal that the elder Bush was far less objectionable than his progeny, this loud assertion put him in a most untenable position. This attempt to channel Clint Eastwood may have been the high point of his peevishness. It also gave many people in our deluxe-air-cushioned-built-for-speed country that this was some sort of clever option. Republicans love to tell us that taxes are bad and that we should be able to keep our hard-earned money. Thank you, Republicans! Now I can afford to go out and buy my own health care coverage and pave the roads of my state and keep the doors of my public schools open.
I learned to hate taxes way back when I used to play Monopoly. Seventy-five bucks for "luxury tax?" Can't you see I'm constructing an empire here? Did you expect me to redistribute my wealth to the other money-grubbing thieves sitting around the table? That's my hard-won cash, and I'm not giving back to the bank just because I had the misfortune of landing on that space instead of Boardwalk or Park Place.
But rules are rules, and I am no cheater, so I paid up and waited for my turn to come around again. Now it's the Republicans' turn in the House of Representatives. They just rolled double sixes and they want to make sure that the tax cuts that were put in place under the Son Of No New Taxes. Those are the ones that protect Americans making more than two hundred thousand dollars a year. The current President, who has also made a lot of promises, would like to see those people "pay more of their fair share." Meanwhile, the guy who wanted to be President but made some bad choices of his own had a suggestion: "They should be extended until we are out of this recession," John "You Picked Who For Your Vice-President?" McCain said. "At such time we can look at other tax hikes. But when we're in a serious recession I cannot believe that raising taxes is a good thing on anybody." Somebody wake John up and tell him that the recession is over. Especially for those lucky enough to be making more than two hundred thousand dollars a year.
And so the dance continues. The debt clock continues to tick away in the background, the debate over how we're going to pay for all of this. I suggest we start tossing all our extra money in the center of the board until somebody lands on "Free Parking."