Steve, I've not responded to your initial proposal because I thought it a very ingenious proposal to which I not given any thought at all. I hate to admit it, but I believe I'll have to chew it over in my mind before forming an opinion.

Re Boomer's comments about health care, she is absolutely right that this is a hot button issue and will be for years. What to me is the most frustrating is that there are relatively small portions of the health issue, like medicare buy-in for early retirees or some procedure for individuals paying ungodly rates to join more efficient groups, could be solved, but politics precludes it.

Steve, I do not know how to jump start the economy. If I did, I might still be inside the beltway making mucho money. But I do know that giving everybody a few hundred bucks or sticking successful companies with a modern day sin tax isn't going to make it.

But since I have nothing to offer, I'll add a few quotes on taxes:


Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat

The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. -- Will Rogers

The taxpayer; that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination. -- Ronald Reagan

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. -- Robert A. Heinlein

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away. -- John S. Coleman, address, Detroit Chamber of Commerce, 1956

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for. -- Will Rogers

The share-the-wealth movement appeals most to those with the least to share.

I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.. -- T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report

Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even. -- Will Rogers

To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals .... is none the less robbery because it is .... called taxation. -- US Supreme Court in Loan Association v. Topeka (1874)

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert A. Heinlein

I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half of the money. -- Arthur Godfrey

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -- H. L. Mencken

This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. -- Albert Einstein

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. -- Herman Wouk

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay. -- Milton Friedman

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. -- John Maynard Keynes

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. -- Will Rogers (1879 - 1935), Illiterate Digest (1924), "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. -- Plato, The Republic

People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women. -- Unknown

Most [tax revisions] didn't improve the system, they made it more like Washington itself: complicated, unfair, cluttered with gobbledygook and loopholes designed for those with the power and influence to hire high-priced legal and tax advisers. -- Ronald Reagan

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. -- Calvin Coolidge

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right. -- Unknown

There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich and poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. -- Justice Learned Hand

For an illustration of the difference between proportionate and progressive taxation, we can look to the Bible. There, tithing is explained as the economic basis of our Judaic-Christian religions. The Lord says you shall contribute one-tenth and He says, 'If I prosper you 10 times as much you will give 10 times as much.' That is proportionate -- but look what happens today when you start computing Caesar's share. A man of average income who suddenly prospered ten times as much would find his personal income tax increased 43 times. -- Ronald Reagan

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. -- Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income. -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1758

You can talk about "social justice" all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected That is not social justice or any other kind of justice. -- Thomas Sowell

The power to tax involves the power to destroy. -- Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. -- Ronald Reagan, Address to National Association of Realtors, March 28, 1982

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821

The most laughable White House criticism is that tax cuts are a 'free lunch.' The American people's work created that money. Only in Washington could there be a belief that letting people keep more of what they create is a giveaway. -- Forbes, August 26, 1996

What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and twenty times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and dole it back ... and what do we end up with? We end up with a jobs program for bureaucrats, and accountants, and lawyers, and somewhere along the way the taxpaying citizens are just plain forgotten. I'll tell you what I think 'fair' means. I think it means we all bear the same burden in the same proportion. I think it means that the system not only allows, but encourages us to participate in the economy. -- Tom Clancy, Executive Orders, 1996

The principle involved here is time-honored and true: and that is -- it's your money. -- Robert Dole

The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs -- in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place. -- Robert Dole, Barron's August 12, 1996

Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money. -- Joseph Sobran, (1946- ) American writer and editor. Formerly senior editor at National Review.

If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you. -- William E. Simon