Harold Meyerson Opinion Writer

Welfare-queen states

By Harold Meyerson, Published: May 17

Okay. Just for the hell of it, let’s go after the debt and the deficit the Republican way. No new taxes. All through cutbacks. And I’ll confine my quibbles to a few parenthetical asides.

To begin, then: We’re broke! We can’t afford any more taxes! (Well, America’s 400 wealthiest taxpayers certainly can. In 1955, according to the Campaign for America’s Future, the country’s 400 wealthiest taxpayers had an average income of $13.3 million (in 2008 dollars) and paid 51.2 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 2008, according to IRS calculations, they had an average income of $270.5 million and paid 18 percent of that in federal income taxes. And in 1955, by the way, we could afford to pave roads.)

Harold Meyerson
Writes a weekly political and domestic affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

Republicans’ concern over the growth of government is moral as well as fiscal. To quote the House Republican “road mapâ€