You know that old saw about death and taxes being the two great inevitables? Republican Representative Louie Gohmert doesn’t seem to agree.

(1)
Here he is, holding forth on the iniquities of the estate tax:

Now, after someone dies and someone comes in and steals from them, we consider that in most society (sic) reprehensible. … But when the government comes in, because we have the power to pass laws and legalize theft that otherwise would be considered reprehensible, it’s okay. But it is not okay. … Jesus never advocated the government go steal. He said ‘you do it. Do it with your own money, don’t steal it from somebody else.’ And that is why this should not pass.

If estate taxes amount to stealing from the dead, then income taxes or sales taxes must amount to stealing from the living.

If someone receives a salary that is paid for with those stolen funds, or enjoys a health-care plan that is paid for with those stolen funds — say, someone like Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas — then that makes him a receiver of stolen goods. So by his own lights, Gohmert should be arrested and clapped in jail.

(2)
Gohmert probably hasn’t realized it yet, but he is advocating a radical economic idea: the government should not levy taxes, it should just finance expenditures with its own money (which, fortunately, it can just keep printing up).

Come to think of it, didn’t Bush take the first baby steps towards precisely this grand goal, by cutting taxes and raising government expenditures? If you take what Bush did, and follow it to its logical conclusion, don’t you end up with the Gohmert doctrine?