Who will be first to send the money back? By Bill Thompson

Here's your chance, tax-cut opponents. Here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is.

You know who you are. You're the people who insisted all through last year's presidential campaign that you didn't need a tax cut, didn't even want a tax cut. You're the people who said you don't care about keeping your money to use as you see fit, who said it's fine with you if the politicians grab your hard-earned dough and pick the best way to spend it.

You said it with an air of superiority, as if your self-congratulatory declarations of contempt for tax relief somehow made you a better citizen than those of us who appreciate any reprieve from the government's confiscatory avarice. `No tax cut is needed' you told the government in poll after poll -- and me, in email after email. If the government cuts my taxes, you said, I'll...

You'll what? You'll give the money back to the government?

Surely, if you believe that a tax cut is fiscally irresponsible and that the government needs the money more than you do -- and that's more or less what you said you believed -- then what can you do but decline the tax break?

Having emphatically stated your objection to tax-cutting, there's no way on earth you could just pocket the money and go on about your business. Is there?

Unless, of course, you happen to be a, uh, what's that word? Oh, I remember: Unless you're a `hypocrite.'

In fact, now that Congress has approved a $1.35 trillion tax cut and the government is gearing up to fire off rebate checks to taxpayers from coast to coast, all those smug humanitarians who have scoffed at the very idea of tax relief ought to take immediate action. They ought to sit down this very minute and write a letter to the government rejecting the $300 or $600 earmarked for them and asking the Treasury Department to put the money right back into the federal vault so that the deep-thinkers in Congress can dream up new and amazing ways to spend it.

Then, as new and lower income tax rates are phased in for all taxpayers, the tax-cut opponents should make arrangements to continue paying at the older, higher rates. They couldn't have made it any plainer, after all: `They don't want a tax cut.'

Here's a tip, fellow taxpayers: Don't wager your tax rebate that the folks who said they didn't want a tax cut will selflessly return it to the government.

`The New York Times' went out and asked some taxpayers on the street what they thought about the tax cut. The `Times' story quoted a Maryland resident who said his tax savings would help him build a new house.

The story also quoted a diehard tax-cut critic: "I'm not interested in the check. I don't have any problem with my federal income taxes."

And another: "...don't want it and don't need it."

But neither apparently said anything about sending the money back to the government.

It certainly comes as no surprise that people who insist that they don't want a tax cut would decide to accept the money once the tax cut occurs. Talk is cheap.

But it is surprising beyond description that so many Americans seem to have fallen prey to this Clinton-era propaganda that tax cuts are bad. Have these people looked at their paychecks or their tax returns lately?

The federal government helps itself to a breathtaking portion of our earnings each payday and local jurisdictions help themselves to large chunks of what Uncle Sam misses. Even one of the tax-cut opponents interviewed by `The New York Times' complained about ever-rising property taxes.

Bill Clinton's presidency featured plenty of sleight-of-hand and lots of mirror tricks but perhaps the slickster's most mind-boggling accomplishment was promulgating the notion that it's un-American to suggest that the government should ease its stranglehold on the people's wallets.

Now that President Bush has delivered on his most important campaign promise, all that could change. The taxpayers just might learn to enjoy spending their own money.

Bill Thompson is a `Star-Telegram columnist.

(817) 390-7787 billthompson@star-telegram.com

-- (lefties.going.to@keep.the.money), May 30, 2001

Answers

They owe me more. I got nearly 4K when single and my then girlfriend got 2K. We got married and together only got 1.5K

They need to send a BIG check to make up for the screwing we got!

-- Give me (the@money.com), May 30, 2001.

Welcome to the marriage tax. Our intention is to discourage bourgeois marriage by taxing it. We haven't figured out what to do about gay marriage yet.

-- (DNC@counting.house), May 30, 2001.

Do we get our country and goodtimes back?

This ain't a tax cut, it is a bribe.

-- (pinhe@d.detector), May 30, 2001.

How can someone be bribed with something they already earned. Seems to me the entitlements are bribes, and only a lefty would believe that a tax cut is an entitlement.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 30, 2001.

Where are the spending cuts?

You don't think there is going to be any more surplus under this GW creep do you?

-- (pinhe@d.detector), May 30, 2001.

First off, in order to get a tax cut OR a rebate, you must be a WORKING TAXPAYER.

Now you can see why the liberals are up in arms.

-- Telinet (like@it.is), May 30, 2001.

It's just not fair.

-- whiny dem (gimme@something.free), May 30, 2001.

Course when you lose your job and have no income, you don't pay anything at all. Heh I think I finally get it, this Dubya bs.

-- (bush@twofaced.scum), May 30, 2001.

Those whose income is low enough that they will get a refund next April can use their $300 check to pay for higher gas and power costs. This is what Dumbya suggested to help his friends increase their incomes from 8 or 9 figures last year, up to 10 or 11 figures this year. Those whose income is high enough that they will owe taxes next April might as well just keep the money in the bank, they will have to give it back soon anyway.

Sounds like a great deal, I'm sure glad Dumbya did this to help all of us.

-- (Dumbya's corporate puppetmasters @ laughing all the way. to the bank), May 31, 2001.

Let's see now... The dems are screaming bloody murder over a rise in gas prices, to a figure that we saw last summer at this time (under Clinton), at it's these exact same dems that voted against the tax cuts, even the $300 and $600 that applies to the poorest earners. They're afraid of big oil (which actually provides a usable commodity), but have no problem with big governement.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 31, 2001.

Well, "libs", I don't know where YOU live, but where I live gas prices were close to $.50/gal. cheaper last year at this time than they are now.

Do all "conservatives" live by the mantra, "If you repeat it enough times, it becomes fact"?

-- (dittomonkeys@re.morons), May 31, 2001.

“I did not have sex with that woman”

Ah, you were saying?

-- Lay Down (on@the.couch), May 31, 2001.

Responding to what you wrote would be akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

Apparently "conservatives" are quite unimaginative as well.

-- (dittomonkeys@re.morons), May 31, 2001.

At this time last year in the Midwest, gas prices WERE this high.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 31, 2001.

Last year at this time, I was paying about .30 less for gas than I am now.

If I see any benefit from the tax cut, then I'll decide what to do with it.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2001.

"If I see any benefit from the tax cut, then I'll decide what to do with it. "

Else you can send it back as being unfairly skewed toward the "rich". I'm sure there are millions of others who also feel it would be better spent by on a fish hatchery in Podunk, Vermont (after funneling it through a massive bureacracy reducing it to pennies on the dollar of course).

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 31, 2001.

I'll probably send it to a deserving program that was slighted by the Bush tax cut.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2001.

Sure you will.

-- Telinet (like@it.is), May 31, 2001.

"I'll probably send it to a deserving program that was slighted by the Bush tax cut. "

There you go. True libertarianism at work. You, not the government (Bush or Daschle or some nameless faceless bureacrat), deciding how to spend your hard-earned dollars. Congratulations on the one small baby step away from socialism.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 31, 2001.

"You, not the government (Bush or Daschle or some nameless faceless bureacrat), deciding how to spend your hard- earned dollars. Congratulations on the one small baby step away from socialism. "

Dittos back! Nice to see your education here finally sticking a bit.

-- (too@funny.haha), May 31, 2001.

It doesn't matter whether a single liberal sends back the tax refund check to D.C. That is a red herring. The real significance of this tax cut bill is that, at a stroke, GW Bush has repaid all of the big money contributors every dime of the 100 million dollars or so they paid into his campaign along with something like a trillion dollar bonus.

That's a return of 10000 to 1. Try getting that kind of return on the stock market!

The smiles of jubilation over this tax cut bill in the board rooms of the Fortune 500 are big enough to split their heads open like so many ripe watermelons. The couple hundred bucks I get back won't mean squat - no matter what I do with it.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), May 31, 2001.

I guess we'll just have to do a better job to legislate equal outcomes. Then maybe you too can be a watermelon head. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), June 01, 2001.

I take offense to the disparaging of my town's name. I expect an immediate apology.

-- Paulie (from@po.dunk.vermont), June 01, 2001.

Got a statement in my last paycheck that says the federal government requires a new way to figure my taxes. The taxes on part of my income remain at the same level. Through a calculation that is clearly explained, the taxes on the remaining portion of my income were raised several percentage points. I follow the math used -- but there was no explanation about why this is suddenly required. I guess it's so they'll have something to give back to me?

-- helen (v@e.r), June 01, 2001.

First, a comment on the Bill Thompson column: Do they actually pay you to write this stuff? "Send the money back" was a snippy little response SEVERAL MONTHS AGO maybe, but hardly worthy of an editorial now. Yikes. I await Thompson's next hard-hitting editorial, "I Know You Are But What Am I"...

Secondly, I think Tarzan raises one interesting point that got kicked around a little bit. I believe that when it comes to helping those folks legitimately in need, local organizations do a much better and much, MUCH more efficient job than any Federal beauracracy could possibly do. AND I believe that all would be better off if the government got out of the charity business and returned that money to the taxpayers.

The liberal mindset says people would pocket the cash and watch their fellow man suffer - I don't believe it, and history refutes the idea. I also believe that this little tax rebate provides a small chance to show that "Republican" and "heartless" are not synonymous.

How about it, Mr. Conservative Pants? Earmark some percentage of your tax rebate (25%? 33%? 50%?) for your favorite charities. Use the rest to stimulate the ol' economy. 50% of whatever I get back is going to the local homeless shelter and to United Way...

-- RC (randyxpher@aol.com), June 01, 2001.

Duh.....Duh......Duh.......Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuumb!!!!; Man, micro-publicans are getting DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMBER every second....I mean......DAAAAAAAAM!!!!!!!!

-- you_are_a_Gomer (dufusyouare@dumbass.com), August 09, 2001.

If I had a choice in the matter I would send the money back. Since I already owe them money, I have been told it would be debited from what I owe.

I have also been told that this is automatic, and I cannot stop it from being done. Isn't that special-The IRS telling me I must accept this money.

Oh well.

-- Enlightenment (gone@away.now), August 09, 2001.