Standing in a Bucket

"For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." ~ Winston Churchill

While thousands of Washington State citizens sent a loud message to their elected leaders last week protesting taxes at Tea Parties held across the state Democrats spent Tax Day introducing new bills to increase your taxes.

Here's a list of the Democrats' new proposals from Rep Matt Shea:

• House Bill 2377 -- Would increase the state sales tax from 6.5 percent to 6.8 percent for three years. It's expected this will extract an additional $1 billion from taxpayers. It also redistributes some of the tax money collected to low-income families under a state "working family tax credit" program approved last year.

• House Bill 2354 -- Would create a new tax on "intangible" property, such as stocks and bonds, interests in corporations, gold or other precious metals, mutual funds, money market funds and other personal investments. The tax would be levied as $1 for every $100 dollars of intangible property for every resident in Washington.

• House Bill 2378 -- Would increase the maximum school levy percentages to retroactively collect money above the current levy lids previously approved by voters.

Thus we find Democrats in Olympia standing in a bucket trying to lift themselves up by the handle.