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"You aren't really going to say that, are you?" said my wife, when I told her that I was thinking of writing about it.
It's not that she is concerned about readers thinking that I am an idiot. I have already demonstrated my idiocy often enough to have settled that issue.
"Don't go into our personal finances," she asked.
Fair enough, since my tax return is also her tax return and she is entitled to her privacy.
This much, though, I can state:
* We're in the 25 percent "tax bracket."
* The actual tax we'll pay will be 10-11 percent.
The United States is - What? - $12.3 trillion in debt, $40,000 for every man, woman and child.
President Obama, who sure can talk but sure can't add, wants to spend about $3.2 trillion but the nation will take in $2 trillion or so in tax revenues.
We're fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We bailed out the financial sector. We bought General Motors and Chrysler. We owe the Chinese gazillions.
Our grandchildren are probably doomed to living standards more closely approaching those of Haiti than the standard of living we enjoy today. Well, OK. Haiti might be an exaggeration, but ... Mexico? South Africa?
Quite likely.
Yet our household will pay just 11 percent of our income in federal taxes.
We claim no children as dependents (we just feed them when they show up). Our mortgage interest payments are tiny.
We should be paying more in taxes.
If that's what the system allows, that's what we'll pay. I'm not about to write a check for "more."
But the system should require more of us. It should require fiscal responsibiliy, not vote-buying by incumbents who will be retired or dead by the time today's shocking mismanagement of government becomes tomorrow's path to fiscal Armageddon (See quote, above at right).
Even with a flat tax, we would probably be paying 16 percent or so of our income if such a tax were enacted on a revenue-neutral basis, i.e., giving the federal government only as much money as the current system gives it.
But the federal government needs to have twice as much money as it now takes in, if we are to get back to fiscal solvency.
I care about grandchildren, all 14 of the little savages ... some, by now, not so very little any more.
Our generation got the nation into this mess, by having our hands outstretched for more and more federal aid, from college aid to federal money for schools (unconstitutional, if you read the Constitution), to orange mini-buses hauling around senior citizens (nice, but it's not up to the federal government to provide that service).
And in my very personal, possibly very wrong opinion, we should be paying more in taxes.
However, I don't want to pay twice as much.
So, here's the deal:
* Congress and President Obama should increase taxes across the board by 50 percent. Don't give me that hogwash about "the poor can't afford it." A full 40 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income taxes, and not more than 20 percent of Americans are below the federal poverty threshhold at any given time - and the federal poverty threshhold isn't really, truly poor, though it is uncomfortable. So increase taxes.
* Congress and President Obama should decrease federal spending by 10 percent in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
How? Bring our troops home from Korea, Okinawa, Japan. Let South Korea, by now a rich nation, and Japan, long a rich nation, provide the ground troops to deter a North Korean attack, with the U.S. reserving the possibility of nuclear retaliation, which should convince China that it does not want radioactivity blowing over its land mass, so China should curb North Korea.
Phase out federal aid to public education, 10 percent per year, for 10 years. That's a state responsibility.
Bring home our troops from Egypt (!) Kosovo (!) and the umpty-ump other places where they now are. Kill more Al Qaeda terrorists and, if they get in the way, their friends and sympathizers, then bring troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Institute a "means test" for Social Security and Medicare. Make it high, maybe exempting the first $50,000 of income per person, but quit calling them "entitlements." I don't care if Americans paid into them. We paid into the income tax, too, and the unemployment tax, and the FICA and the XYZ as well (I just made up that XYZ to see if you are still reading).
Americans aren't stupid.
Judging by the joke of a "budget" he released last week, maybe Obama is. Certainly, collectively, Congress is.
But the American people can add and subtract. It's time to tell the truth; we need higher taxes to pay for the stupid spending of the past half-century, bipartisanly stupid spending.
Oh.
What are the Bonavita family's taxes, in dollars?
Shh.
My wife might be reading.
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Denny Bonavita is the editor and publisher of McLean Publishing Co. in west-central Pennsylvania, including the Courier-Express in DuBois. E-mail: denny2319@windstream.net
