Saying it again, but differently!

Chris Stirewalt, Washington Examiner: When in doubt, soak the rich, whoever they are,

Today, nearly 40 percent of American workers pay no income tax whatsoever thanks to things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and other deductions. On the other side of the ledger, the top 6 percent of earners cover 60 percent of all income taxes.

In 1980, the bottom half of earners accounted for 7 percent of all income taxes. Today it is less than 3 percent. Conversely, the top 10 percent once paid half of the taxes, rather than the 70 percent they do today.

The trend is away from the shared sacrifice of the post-New Deal era and a return to the old model of soaking the rich. The problem now, though, is that the price of government requires defining rich down. To make the nut on government spending, congressional mandarins have included your dentist and high school principal.

Still, somehow, non-taxpayers were still eligible for "tax refunds" when Washington sought to "stimulate" the economy out of its deepening torpor. By sending poor people $300 or $600, the hope was that they would act irrationally and buy Chinese-made, big-screen televisions or knobby tires for their pickup trucks, or whatever congressmen suppose their constituents like to buy.