An Excerpt from Will Rogers' Weekly Articles Volume 2 The Coolidge Years: 1925-1927:

POLITICS IS TAXES ACCORDING TO WILL ROGERS' CONCLUSIONS

Now, I would advise you not to read this Article. You are just wasting your time, and again it will just make you about half sore. I doubt if there is five people in the United States that will agree with me on what I am going to tell you in here. I know you will say, "What's the idea of writing a crazy thing like that then?" Well, I will tell you why. All you hear in Washington and all you can read about in the papers is "Cutting down the taxes." Everybody is howling, "Cut the taxes."

I was in Washington a few weeks ago, and as I came into the Willard Hotel to have breakfast one morning I met and sit down and had breakfast with Charley Dawes' brother Rufus Dawes, a man that has held some very high Government positions along financial advice lines. We of course got to talking taxes. Nobody ever had breakfast in Washington without either talking Taxes or one telling the other about President Coolidge coming home from Church and his wife (who didn't go) asking him the text. He said, "Sin." She said "What did he say about it?" The President remarked, "He was agin it."

That story of course you get with each meal. It's running Taxes a close second for national conversation.

Well, this Dawes is a mighty pleasant fellow, and I happened to spill my tax ideas to him. He said to me "You ought to talk to Mellon. That's just along Mellon's ideas. If it wasn't for the lack of Politics of it."

So that got me kinder swelled up, I says to myself, gee if I am thinking along the same line as Mellon, I don't think so bad of my thoughts. So that is what give me the encouragement to tell you my tax plans. Mellon of course can't tell you, because he is in Politics. (Not because he wants to be, but because he happens to be.) But I tell you because I am not in Politics.

Now, when I tell you that if I was running the Government, there would be no lowering of Taxes, you know now a Comedian is crazy.

President Coolidge says that we are just approaching an era of prosperity. Everybody generally admits (with a few exceptions, of some businesses) that we are better off than we ever were in our lives, yet we owe a National debt of almost 30 Billions of dollars. (That's Billions, Bub, not millions. I would write it out, but I haven't got enough paper.)

We owe more money than any Nation in the World, and WE ARE LOWERING TAXES. When is the time to pay off a debt if it is not when you are doing well? All Government statistics say that 70 percent of every dollar paid in the way of taxes goes to just the keeping up of Interest and a little dab of amortization of our National Debts. In other words, if we didn't owe anything our taxes would only be less than one third what they are today. Well, if two thirds of what you pay goes to keeping up just Interest, why don't we do our best to try and cut down the principal, so it will lower that tremendous interest?

We howl and holler about why don't Europe pay? Why don't we pay ourselves?

Now here is what I can't savvy. Why is it that one of us, in fact all of us will work and save, and stint all our lives. For what? Why, to leave something to our children. When we die, we want everything we have left clear and unencumbered. We will break our necks to leave them without a single debt. In fact we won't die if we can help it till we get out of debt for their sake. Now that is what we will do as individuals, BUT when it comes to COLLECTIVELY, why it looks like we will break our neck to see HOW MUCH we can leave them owing.
In other words, why don't we cut our National and State and Municipal debt down as much as we try to cut down our personal one? Now they are making one slash of taxes of 350 million dollars. Now will you tell me why, with prosperity going like it is now that we couldn't pay the same taxes this year we did last, and apply that 350 million on the national debt and help get rid of some of that 70 percent that goes out of each dollar we pay in as overhead.

Every Industry and business in the world have rushed battalions of Experts and Lobbyists to Washington the last few months just to show the Government that theirs was the very Industry that was "just RUINED by the taxes, and wouldn't they please take them off theirs and put them on something else." Will you tell me any good reason (OUTSIDE OF POLITICS) why Taxes should be lowered this year? I know it's good politics to lower taxes. In fact, did you ever figure it out Taxes is all there is to Politics? I bet you tomorrow if you started a Political Party and had this as its platform, "No taxes are to be paid at all. We will borrow money on our National resources for all current expenses. Remember the Slogan. No Taxes as long as we can borrow." Well I will bet you you would have the biggest Political party in America.

Now on the other hand, start a Society on the following platform: "Everybody try to borrow all you can personally, and save up nothing. Leave your children plenty of debts." Say you wouldn't get 10 to join that. You would be arrested for being crazy. But you will let the coming Generation pay 70 percent (of each dollar they pay in) just for what you borrowed during your Generation. Our children shouldn't pay for the wooden ships we tried to build during the war, and the millions of dollars we spent on aviation that didn't aviate, and the Hog Islands that REALLY HOGGED us. That was not the coming generation's fault. They will have their own wars to look after, without paying for ours.

You know Americans have been getting away pretty soft up to
now. Every time we needed anything, why it was growing right under our nose. Every natural resource in the world, we had it. But with them getting less, and debts getting more, there is going to be some work going on in this country some day. We will have prosperity and get along fine now for a couple of years and then something will happen and we won't be doing so well. Well then they will raise the taxes again, but they will wait till we ain't doing very well. Seventy percent, that's |700 out of every $1000 you pay in, going for Interest and back debts, and only $300 for running expenses.
Now I would like to hear from the five that agree with this plan of mine, if there is five. Write to me in care of this newspaper. I am also going to get Secretary Mellon's personal opinion on it, if he thinks it's a good scheme, as Mr. Dawes said he knew he would. Why, I am willing to string along with Andy's judgment, even if I don't get the other five.

Mind you, I would not advise anybody to run for office on that platform. It would be as bad as Davis running on honestly. Where would common business sense get? No Sir, you let a Politician return home from Washington and announce, "Boys we lowered your taxes. We had to borrow the money to do it, but we did it." Say, they would elect him for life. While me on my platform would be thrown to the wolves as an infidel. I am out here in California, and next week I will tell you about the big Football Game, Alabama vs Oregon.