Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
Oh yeah, it’s that time again. Time for Uncle Sam to extract his due from patriotic peasants—with all the zeal of an exuberant child on an Easter egg hunt.
Once you join the taxpaying masses, your second job (besides the one that pays those taxes) is to navigate a few gazillion regulatory rules and 60,000 pages of confounding case law clearly stating that you owe more than you’ve paid. That’s still less painful than finding out how our uncle spends it.
For example, the National Institutes of Health will fork out more than $1 million to help grownups get over their fear of dental visits, per Sen. Rand Paul’s Festivus Report 2020. As chair of the Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management, Paul doesn’t like to see $54 billion tax dollars wasted on things like telling grownups not to be wussies about the dentist, which won’t work on anyone who had impacted wisdom teeth extracted by a dentist who swears he rented a backhoe to pry the bottom ones out.
We’re also funding cool science projects like getting lizards to run on “teeny-tiny” treadmills. Researchers studied six Savannah monitors and Argentine tegus, according to Paul. (Tegus are enormous, ravenous, undocumented reptiles that have been decimating native species throughout the Southeast, but $1.5 million of our tax dollars are helping scientists discover how lizard joints move.) Paul can’t figure out how this will benefit us, since he learned how human joints move in med school. No lizards required.
One caveat: Although Paul has more brains in his toenail clippings than I will ever possess, he knows squat about lizards. Tegus and monitors can reach 4 feet in length and could be mistaken for offensive linebackers. No “teeny-tiny” here.
Here’s another good one: Remember how you eagerly checked the mail for your stimulus checks last year? Well, a million or so went to dead people, but you can’t just ask decision-makers to stop licking stamps and put them in a timeout. You need legislation with a pompous title such as Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act. It passed, but won’t take effect for three years. “Can’t rush something like that, I guess,” Paul said.
Then there’s military spending. If the Festivus report is accurate, the Department of Veterans Affairs spent more than $3.4 billion on products that never arrived or were seriously delayed, sometimes for years. So why didn’t they order their stuff from Amazon Prime? They’d get it in two days. If delivery was late, they could call and scream bloody murder like everybody else. Doesn’t the military have a few high-ranking people in charge of fit-pitching? Alternatively, they could just borrow a tank and drive over to Amazon. That’s what any sane person would do.
We also paid to find out if little kids will eat food an adult sneezed on. I wish they’d just asked me. If it’s a bowl of broccoli, then not a chance. If it’s a bowl of M&M’s, that’s fine. Sneeze away.
If you haven’t done your taxes yet, please hurry. Uncle Sam needs every penny to continue vital research on how jet lag affects South American rodents and getting Mediterranean youth to lay off the hookah. Don’t be late. The military won't deploy tanks, but the IRS might.
Every April reminds Jan A. Igoe that math is not a close personal friend, but she can dye some really nice Easter eggs to barter with her accountant. Happy Easter, stay healthy and send tax tips to HumorMe@SCLiving.coop.