Political spending tax would do the trick

President Obama desperately wants to raise taxes on the rich. Some may call this class warfare or economic discrimination or socialism. To me all these sound true.

Let's say he managed to get Congress to raise taxes on the rich and the government raised $1 trillion in new revenue. Is there anyone naive enough to think this new money would go to help pay off our national debt?

We would be lucky if 10 percent of that would go to pay off the debt. The other 90 percent would just ease the pressure on lawmakers to curtail their addictive spending habits - and $900 billion of new social programs designed to buy as many votes as possible would almost certainly be enacted.

There is one source of revenue currently not being taxed but should be: a 20 percent tax on political spending. Obama is expected to amass $1 billion for his re-election effort; 20 percent of that would mean $200 million going to pay off the national debt. That's from just one politician.

Think of all those political ads we see before elections. Tax them all and we could have the politicians pay off the debt they created. Wouldn't that be great?

Ken Thimmesch

Cedar Rapids