As you may have noticed, I was not elected president in November. I’m proud of my campaign and I think I had a very nice platform, but we live in a democracy and the people have spoken.
Unlike some people I could name, I have accepted my defeat with quiet dignity and grace. And yet, I was not invited to the White House, even though Mr. Romney got to go. This unfortunate oversight means that I must resort to the blogosphere to publicize my swell idea for how to resolve our nation’s endless political wrangling over taxes and the deficit.
Okay, here — in two gross generalizations — is how I see things.
1. People who don’t like taxes usually seem to like unfunded wars and the Pentagon and guarding our borders. Also, they usually seem to think that social welfare programs are driving us into bankruptcy, and that it’s about time for lazy greedy poor sick people to get off their asses, out of their hospital beds, and go create some jobs.
2. People who don’t mind taxes so much usually seem to think wars mostly a big fat waste of blood and treasure. They would rather not have their taxes spent on blowing shit up in other people’s countries and think the Defense budget is driving us into bankruptcy. On the other hand, they like to know that food stamps and unemployment insurance are there when people need them. They think a national health system is a good way to cut costs; if that means a bunch of people in the insurance industry would be unemployed, it’ll be okay because there’s unemployment insurance.
So here’s my proposal. From now on, everybody gets to pick which taxes they pay: Red Taxes or Blue Taxes.
If you elect to pay the Red Taxes, all your money goes to the military and the border patrol. And… Let’s see. Throw in the FBI, maybe, and the CIA, and the TSA, and similar groups that are in the same general category of Keeping Us Safe. Possibly firefighters and cops, too, although lately those folks have been getting screwed by the sort of people who don’t like taxes. So that’s up for debate.
Now. If you pay the Blue Taxes, you pick up the check for Medicare and Medicaid, welfare and education, Social Security, food stamps — all that stuff. Throw in the FDA and all of the regulatory groups. And infrastructure spending, too: libraries, roads, that kind of thing. And maybe national parks, maybe, too.
You’ve got deficit spending going on in each category, so whichever tax you pick, you have to pay the interest on the national debt being run up by your own favorite kind of government program. If Red Tax people want to add a new fighter-bomber program, they don’t have to argue with Blue Tax people; if Blue Tax people want national health, fine, but Red Tax people don’t have to pay taxes to support that.
Now here’s the cool part. If you’re a Red Tax person, you can use the Blue Tax roads, but you have to pay a toll. We could put a computer thing on your car and it would clock your mileage and you’d get a bill every month. You don’t have to pay into Social Security or Medicare but when you get old, you’re on your own. If you’re a Blue Tax person and the United States is invaded by Zombie Communist Aliens from Mars, you can try to move to Canada or something, but don’t go crying to the Red Tax people because they told you so.
And you can’t change your mind when it’s convenient. You decide what kind of taxes you want to pay for which kinds of expenditures and then that’s it. You take responsibility for your decision and you live with the consequences.