One of my friends posted this yesterday. It looks very much like one of those "post this for a day if you believe it" tropes that circulates around FB:
"DEAR CONGRESS, Last year I mismanaged my funds and this year my family and I cannot decide on a budget.
Until we can come to a unified decision that fits all of our needs and interests, we will have to shut down our check book and will no longer be able to pay our taxes. I'm sure you'll understand.
Thank you very much for setting an example we can all follow."
(Insert squiggle here—read my reply below)
Dear Congress,
I'm sorry. I've fallen for the false analogies to family budgets which fail to account for the legitimate macroeconomic role governments have in managing a nation's economy. But thanks to reading Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman's daily essays, I've regained the understanding I once had of how I cannot print money, make war, or affect either the money supply or the interest rate, and thus there is no equivalency between my debt woes and our country's disparate greater and different obligations.
Therefore, I will pay my taxes, patriotically, just as I expect all my fellow citizens to do, and will not ask for a special tax cut just because I might hire a lawn boy this year.
Now buckle down and pass that clean (and phony) debt limit increase.