Nov. 3
Grave concern. If we cannot achieve tax reform, how will my most important donors avail themselves of the savings that I’ve promised them? Granted, they don’t need the money and won’t notice it if they get it. But that is irrelevant. The essential point is that, if we fail to deliver tax reform to the people who give us money, they will decline to give us money—from which anarchy itself will result.
Besides, this is a matter of principle: tax reform is vital, because taxes are bad and reform is good. Taxes are bad, because what kind of nation will we be, if the well-off and the influential are asked to pay for goods and services for the less advantaged? It’s as morally outrageous as asking healthy people to subsidize the health care costs of the healthiness-challenged.
Moreover, that kind of “charity” breeds laziness. The less wealth the poor and the middle class have, the more they will be inspired and animated by ambition and drive and can-do sticktoitiveness and good old American gumption.
It is different with the rich: they need lower taxes. Why? A little thing called “human nature.” With higher taxes the rich have less left over, and thus have no incentive to work and earn. Why labor to make that extra two million dollars, if you know you’re only going to come away with 1.6 million of it? Why even get out of bed?
Meanwhile, if the wealthy are deprived of the desire to work, who will create jobs for everyone else? Thus, the best tax plan for society is one that guarantees the rich more and the poor less.
In a tangential matter: a Mrs. Giselle Schmutzik of Fond du Lac wants me to employ her nephew as an intern in the DC office. She has, in the past, donated $100 to my campaign. Quid pro quo?
Nov. 4
How can it be that our inability to repeal and replace Obamacare was as much due to our neglect of the matter for six years, as to the fact that many of our constituents like the program and would be devastated without it? Excuse me, but I was under the impression that we lived in “the real world,” in which possessing majorities in both houses of Congress, and the White House, would serve to neutralize all other considerations. Could that possibly not be so?
No wonder Boehner quit. I must ponder this deeply while also pondering how great tax reform is.
Nov. 5
I must take a moment here to express my admiration, if not actual awe, not only of tax reform, but of my colleagues, who bravely go forth, every day, to enact the business of the Republican Party—dissolving and/or subverting government, removing its restrictions, and restoring the money used to operate it to the very nice rich people who rightfully own it–while simultaneously working for tax reform and trying to ignore the extreme embarrassment and disgrace that is Donald Trump. These men and women (and I with them) work tirelessly to pretend Trump isn’t a disaster as President and to turn a blind eye to his flaws, both personal and political.
It isn’t easy. If only the public knew how draining it is to disavow knowledge of things apparent to every eye! To sit in a committee meeting and respond to the urgent questions of the press with nothing but an empty smile! Those of us in Congress—are we not men (and, to an extent, women)? Do we not burn to reply to the press, “Shut up and go away”? And yet we cannot. We must endure being called to account for things we have no desire to talk about.
Mrs. Schmutzik now hints that a larger contribution to my campaign war chest might be forthcoming, were I to hire her nephew—who, it turns out, has been expelled from two private schools and has several DUI arrests.
It was my fellow Irishman, Oscar Wilde, who said, “I can resist everything except temptation.” How well I know the feeling!
Nov. 8
Comes now a certain Roy Moore, Republican candidate for the Senate from the great, if antediluvian, state of Alabama. He is a pious Christian man—a Protestant, but never mind; even Protestants are in favor of tax reform—whose commitment to the bracingly primitive form of his faith, is even stronger than his commitment to our Party and, of course, to tax reform. In spite of these twin DNA helixes of his character—old school Christian patriarchalism and the traditional Republican knowledge of the proper role of women—he is now the victim of accusations by several adult women that he groped and otherwise sexually harassed them when they were teenagers and he was a young man. One of the girls was fourteen at the time.
Or so she claims. But how can we ever know if she—an adult woman today—was ever actually fourteen?
Trust the liberal media to ignore the central, salient point: Molesting a child is bad, yes—but it is only bad for the child. Whereas failing to achieve tax reform is bad for many people, many of whom have children.
Mrs. Schmutzik has baked an apple-peach cake and had it delivered to my office. It is delicious. What to do?
Nov. 10
Certain of my colleagues (all of whom are in favor of tax reform) are calling upon Roy Moore to step down from the Senate race if the sexual harassment allegations are true. It is a position with which I am in complete accord. If we have learned anything over the past few years, it is that there is no such thing as truth and, even if there is, we are allowed to pretend there isn’t. Therefore, we are able to adopt (or pretend to adopt) a morally praiseworthy position and still, assuming Moore wins and votes in favor of tax reform, achieve tax reform.
Trump says that, when he asked Russian President Putin if Russia interfered with our election last year, Putin swore they did not. That, Trump says, is good enough for him. Now the Kremlin says that Trump never actually asked Putin about our election or Russian interference.
That’s good enough for me. Because anything, everything, or nothing is good enough for me. The only thing that matters is tax reform.
I have decided to refuse Mrs. Schmutzik’s request. I am a U.S. Congressman, not a shop owner in need of a stock boy. I have my standards.
Tony Alter
http://tinyurl.com/n82nz6c
