“It’s
early April, which means these are the few days of the year when
Americans of almost every political stripe unite in a perennial ritual:
complaining about taxes. Count me out. I’m happy to pay my fair share to
the government. It’s part of my patriotic duty — and it’s a heckuva
bargain.... There seems to be an inconsistency about people who insist
on wearing flag pins in their lapels, but who grumble about paying
taxes....Genuine patriots don’t complain about their patriotic
obligations....Pay up and be grateful!”
— Former ABC and CNN reporter Walter Rodgers writing in the Christian
Science Monitor, April 2. [109 points]
Runners-up:
“There
was a statistic that came out this week from the Congressional Budget
Office which was just stunning to me. It said that in the last two years
— from 2003 to 2005 — the increase in income for the top one percent
exceeded the total income of the bottom 20 percent. Given that, what
would be wrong with letting the tax cuts for the top one percent expire
and plowing that money into education?”
— Host George Stephanopoulos to Alan Greenspan on ABC’s This Week,
December 16, 2007. [63]
|
“Republicans have taken taxes off the fiscal table, no matter how
sensible they might be. That makes compromise difficult and it could be
bad policy, too. In addition to raising revenue, the small gasoline tax
increase that conservative Republicans were able to purge from the final
1990 deal ‘might have been good energy and environmental policy,’
[former OMB Director Richard] Darman said in a talk last March.”
— Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson’s January 26
“appreciation” of Darman, who died January 25. [34]
Winner
