Taknig One For The Team

"Not everybody defines freedom as the ability to not pay taxes." That's the way Jon Stewart described the Tea Party win this week on the debt ceiling compromise. The compromise that included no new revenues, just spending cuts. The one that kept our mythical Triple A credit rating with the rest of the planet. The one that assured that all our troops would come home immediately so as not to incur any further expense fighting wars in countries that we're giving financial aid to as well.
Wait a second. Strike that last one. That particular bit of spending remains in place. We're spending about three hundred million dollars a day in Afghanistan. The good news is that number should drop substantially in 2012, but it won't go away. To their credit, the folks at the Pentagon have braced in anticipation for hundreds of billions of dollars in austerity measures. That's good news, since they've currently got one of the biggest slices of that yummy federal budget pie. They seem to understand that the United States is now borrowing more money than it takes in income tax, both personal and corporate. The money for body armor and MREs has to come from somewhere.
Why not raise taxes? People are having a hard enough time paying their bills already, and we don't need another recession, or housing crisis or rapture. At times like these, we all have to down and protect what's ours. Like those traffic lights. And the school down the street. And the city park where you hold your Tea Party rallies. Or maybe we should take the example set by Indianapolis Colts quarterback and TV funnyman Peyton Manning. He could have signed a deal worth even more than the five year, ninety million dollar contract that he got but he refused, asking the team to use the extra money on other players. Maybe the Colts will send a check to the Fed when they're all done. Maybe not.