(Lower) Tax Day - UPDATED

You wouldn't know it by the systematic lies perpetrated by the GOP, but you are probably in one of the 98% of working families who are paying lower taxes now that Democrats are in power. AP:

Tax Day rhetoric aside, Americans' bills are lower

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER (AP) – 11 hours ago

WASHINGTON — You wouldn't know it by the Tax Day rhetoric, but Americans are paying lower taxes this year, even with increases passed by many states to balance their budgets. Don't expect it to last.

Congress cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion shortly after President Barack Obama took office, dwarfing the $28.6 billion in increases by states.

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Face it: all conventional wisdom to the contrary, the GOP is the party of higher taxes. They need the money to support their endless invasive wars, their no-bid sweet deals with their cronies, their so-called faith-based programs, their nonfunctional abstinence-only family planning proselytizing and their own personal greed. Oh, and they need it to service the debt on all the programs they instituted off-budget, leaving the cost to be borne by later administrations and later generations. Do not be deceived. The GOP is the party of higher taxes.

(Small editorial update inserted moments after initial posting. - SB)

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Afterthought: I got to thinking about Ohlemacher's "[d]on't expect it to last." Put aside the obvious transformation of the AP into a conservative-leaning news organization that feels compelled to take GOP-style potshots at Obama on every possible occasion, and notice that no sane person would expect it to last, considering the eight years of profligate spending by the Cheney/Bush administration, truly adolescents on a spree with their parents' credit cards. At some point, higher taxes are inevitable; the real question, which AP would never address, is whether Barack Obama will follow through on his campaign promises to redistribute that inevitable tax burden away from working families and toward the wealthiest Americans. But the entity that was once merely "the wire" has become an opinion-news vendor, along with CNN and yes, Fox. It's a sad fact for those of us old enough to remember "the wire."