When Davy Crockett defined a senator as “half-horse and half-man,” he didn’t say which half was which. But I think we can figure it out.
As the U.S. Senate ponders tax reforms, drawing up various schemes to make it much more complicated than simply cutting everybody’s taxes and putting a stop to all the crazy government spending, they wound up, the other day, with a bill that would have socked some people with a 100% tax rate (https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-taxman-cometh-senate-bills-marginal-rates-could-top-100-for-some-1512942118). Oops. For a few, it would’ve been more than 100%.
(“I’ve been offered a lot for my work,” says the gunslinger [Yul Brynner] in The Magnificent Seven. “But I’ve never been offered everything.”)
The faux pas, according to The Wall Street Journal, resulted from “trying to provide benefits to businesses and families but then deny them to the richest people.” Why they have to be denied to “the richest people” is not given. Senate money-wallahs explain the weird tax rates as “unusual hypotheticals.” Then it gets real complicated. I don’t understand it, and I don’t see how a Senator does, either. When things get that complicated, they don’t stay honest.