"Values" is a big word in our politics nowadays.  But what are values
but some sort of shared morality?  Perhaps morality is too strong a
word, yet still, surely our laws reflect our values?  My goal is to
find out.  After all, our laws represent over 200 years of the words
Yea and Nay, uttered by our statesmen in the legislative chambers.
And as priests in the Catholic church, at the climax of mass, feed
supplicants bread and wine, the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ,
with the guidance of altar boys, so our statesmen have lobbyists
directing the Body and the Blood, the subsidies and the taxes, into
and out of various mouths.  Is this not the real climax of American
politics?  Especially this year, as the federal budget ritual has run
months past schedule, with fits, starts, and temporary evacuations of
not just the altar where blessings and curses are concocted but of the
entire church itself!  Our priests are squabbling, the Grinch party
has seized leadership from the pope, and competing cardinals in the
Grinch party are sermonizing with a hopeful eye turned towards the
papal miter and November, promising blessings to all who follow the
one true path.  And thus I intend to investigate the values of our
federal budget, the center of this storm.

  But you protest.  The real issue is crime.  Family values.
Abortion.  The environment.  Illegal immigrants.  Whatever.  And what
about the state and local governments?  The federal government has
over-stepped its bounds, you say, for our great nation is too large
and diverse for us all to agree on one set of values -- we must peer
into local laws and school board budgets to discover the morality of
Chicago as distinct from the morality of New York city.  Do not fear,
gentle reader, for these objections shall be met meetly, and then,
pacified and worthy of your title, we shall begin our investigation.

  The federal budget is over a trillion dollars a year.  Thousands of
dollars per capita.  Over half of all government spending in this
country, over a sixth of the country's economy, summarized in just a
few thousand pages.  Everything the federal government does is in the
budget.  (Well...  There's a few tens of billions that are classified,
and you and I can't read about those. Peanuts.)  You want to eliminate
the EPA and release free enterprise into our chemical industries, our
lakes, and our air?  You want to spend a few piddling billions on new
federal prisons?  It's in the budget, and though I must admit that
state prisons are where most of the action is, analyzing 50 states
budgets would take far too long.  We have to investigate the federal
budget first -- it's so simple!

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 5:3 KJV

  Let us start with the taxes, the tithes if you will, of federal
government.  Mostly these come from the personal income tax.  Poor
families are indeed blessed, for much of their income isn't taxed.
They pay lower marginal tax rates, and there's a scheme called "the
earned income tax credit" for blessing them every April 15th.
However, there are hidden taxes, called "FICA" (Social Security) and
Medicare, which together eat up about 15% of their wages (half of it
is discreetly removed from their employers instead).  All in all
families earning under $30,000 a year pay up 15% of federal income tax
revenues.

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
Matthew 5:5 KJV

  But surely, you say, it must be the middle class, the mainstay of
the country, that is blessed with low taxes.  For them, the mortgage
deduction!  The notion is that every American family should own a
house.  Not just any house but a big house, an expensive house, with
some earth around it, a keep up with the Joneses house, the most they
can afford.  To encourage this sort of prudence, income that goes to
pay mortgage interest payments isn't taxed at all.  Then when they get
old they can sell the house, again without paying any taxes, move to
Florida, and live off the proceeds in a senior citizen's home.  This
is known in prayer books 'round the country as the American Dream.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Matthew 19:24 KJV

  Now we come to the rich.  People too rich to hold real jobs,
with stocks, bonds, and every other kind of investments to live off
of.  Investors in government bonds are unquestionably most blessed, as
they pay no income tax at all.  For those so unfortunate as to be
wealthy and renumeratively employed, there are tax shelters to defer
income till retirement, lower the tax rate, etc.  I'm told that death
is the best kind.  And as for those who buy and sell stocks, real
estate, and other sorts of financial securities, their gains aren't
income but "capital gains".  A flat 28% rate, though the Grinch party
would rather exclude half of them from taxes and tax the rest as
regular income.  The over-taxed Steve Forbes goes one better and asks
for a "flat" tax, which wouldn't tax capital gains at all.  Taxes, it
would seem, are for schmucks, like working people.

  There's a little exception to that -- corporate taxes, where most of
what's left of federal revenues comes from.  Corporate profits are
taxed at up to 35%, and the richest 10% of Americans own most of our
corporations, both public and private.  If an investor is living
off the returns of his stocks, then the money the company pays out
in corporate taxes would otherwise go to the investor, either as
dividends or capital gains -- or in other words taxable income.  In
principle wealthy holders in large corporations pay a 35% tax on
profits and a 28% tax on capital gains, for a total tax rate over 50%!

"What's good for General Motors is good for the country."
Charles Wilson

  And corporate taxes aren't good for General Motors.  But what is a
"profit"?  A subtle and important question.  And lo, there appeared
accountants trained to squabble with the tax God, finding losses to
soak up profits till next year, and manipulating the moneys jointly
owned companies pay so none makes too fat a profit, on paper at least.
And still the tax burden was too heavy, so the money-men blessed the
altar boys, the altar boys blessed the priests, and lo there appeared
many an indulgence.  There are export indulgences, research
indulgences, exploration indulgences, etc., to the tune of thousands
of pages and hundreds of billions of dollars.  All in all the
corporate income tax generated only $103 billion in revenues in 1993
(less than 10% of federal spending), and corporate accountants spent
some similar amount of money avoiding it.

  I think the corporate income tax should be eliminated.  Thousands of
pages of laws, tens of billions of dollars on tax accountants and tax
shelters, all to collect a measly hundred billion that could be more
easily collected from the eventual recipients of the profits --
shareholders.  Sure, corporations would become one more kind of tax
shelter, but what's one more indulgence in this great country of ours?

"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee,
that I am not as other men are... I give tithes of all that I possess."
Luke 18:11-12 KJV

  And here we are at the end of the road for taxes.  As you can see,
there's a tax break for everyone, but somehow everyone is overtaxed.
WHERE ARE THE UNDERTAXED?  Well, there's charities.  Universities.
Think-tanks.  Churches.  All sorts of "non-profit" institutions aren't
taxable, and the money people pay them is blessed, too.  So if you're
tired of sending the federal government money, if you need a blessing,
please send your check for however much you like to the "Morgan Price
Life Improvement Fund".  May the auditor be with you.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven."
Matthew 5:12 KJV

Onto federal spending.  These blessings, always a subject of
glowing sermons by our priests, can nevertheless by counted, measured,
and ranked in beatitude, that is to say, in dollars.  Counting
is what dollars are for! 

"Honour thy father and mother."
Mark 10:19 KJV

And the biggest dollar item in federal spending is Social Security.  A
pyramid scheme of paying retirees "returns" based on "investments"
collected from workers and employers, disguised as welfare for
geezers, disguised as a pension plan.  The geezers, who thus have more
at stake in the federal government than anybody else, vote more than
anyone else, which perhaps explains why it's so expensive.  Young folk
like it too -- otherwise when granny gets a little senile they'd have
to take care of her.  Which means either an expensive nursing home or
letting her move in!  After running away from the parents to go to
college, get married, or find work, who'd want to live with them
again?  In a nation of dysfunctional families the federal government
provides two great social services to the middle class -- subsidized
college educations so that kids can run away from their parents, and
subsidized pensions for parents so the kids never have to look back.

"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of
such is the kingdom of God."
Luke 18:16 KJV

Next are Medicare and Medicaid, which subsidize health care for the
elderly. And the poor, but taking care of old folks is much more
expensive.  Some Grinches suspect it as welfare for doctors and
subsidies for pharmaceutical companies.  But you protest, gentle
reader?  The Grinches froth about big spending on welfare?  Various
L's (that L-word has been taboo ever since Dukakis) rant about the
overweening defense budget?  Surely those are the big items in the
federal budget?  But nay, you are deceived, and those items are
merely disliked.

"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
Matthew 5:39 KJV

The next item is the defense budget, of which less than a quarter goes
to pay the salaries of the people involved.  Most goes to
"operations", buying military hardware, designing military hardware,
and building and maintaining military bases -- in other words, federal
contractors.  Oink oink.  The state of California is the empress sow.
After that is interest payments, which it would seem are the cursed
remnant of the over-spending 80s.  Depending on who you talk to,
big-spending L's, big Grinch defense budgets, and aid to heathen
socialist foreigners bear the blame, but in fact the inflation in
health care spending is as plausible an explanation.  And then there
are piddling items of no great import, totaling a mere fraction of the
budget.  In descending order of dollars they include the Department of
Agriculture, which pays farmers to make food more expensive and then
subsidizes it to make it cheaper, the Veteran's administration (more
health care costs), the Department of Labor (mostly unemployment
insurance), the Department of Transportation (mostly interstate
highways), the Department of Energy (mostly maintenance of nuclear
weapons), and Aid for Families with Dependent Children (better known
as the welfare bureaucracy, and thought to be cursed by the Grinch
sect).  And take note, gentle reader, for there are a hundred agencies
in the alphabet soup yet, and I will not trouble you with the dregs.

So here I end my little guide to our country's bible.  As you have
seen, it is a most Christian bible: full of loopholes, and
contradicting the Word of God.  As in all bibles, the message is not
entirely clear, yet I have shown you the paths: may you find your own
blessings; I have shown you the word; may you preach your own sermons.

                               :)