Incredibly Unappetizing

“I’ve never been appetized by that before, Mom!” spouted my 14 year old daughter.

She was speaking about the ham-cheddar-onion-spinach-mustard-tomato sandwich I’d just made for myself. A delectable delight, if ever there was one. Once she saw me double over laughing at her comment, she back tracked. “Uh…I mean I don’t LIKE spinach. It’s never appetized me before!” As I continued to giggle, she started laughing and said, “I don’t like you!”

She does you know. Like me. There are even days when she loves me. But she’s a fourteen year old girl and her days of ‘appetizing’ me are sometimes sporadic.

This morning as I went through my Facebook feed, I read a comment from a friend of mine. She noted her surprise at the sparse number of people watching from the sidelines during President Obama’s inaugural walk.

My comment back to her was, “I think they all saw their first paycheck of the year and are suffering buyers remorse.”

Many people, upon receiving their first paychecks of 2013, discovered that they were decidedly ‘unappetized’ by it.
And before you get your liberal undies in thermonuclear wad, yes, I realize that the reason all our paychecks have shrunk is because Obama allowed a temporary tax cut to expire. So it’s not ‘new’ taxes, per se, it’s just an old tax coming back to bite us in the wallet. Which feels like a NEW tax to those hard working Americans budgeting every penny in this tough economy.

And while I’ve never been ‘appetized’ by taxes–old or brand spankin’ new—I do understand their necessity. They are, as we say, a necessary evil. However, you would think that the president would have moved heaven and earth to make sure this temporary tax did not expire on a populace struggling to make ends meet, and oft times not making it. A friend leaned over to me in church yesterday and showed me an amount on a piece of paper, well in excess of a thousand dollars. “This is what we are losing this year from our paycheck, Pam. We can’t afford this loss!”

My heart went out to her. I know she has four children, her husband has had his hours cut at work and she is unable to find a job. I am truly unappetized by what the government takes from the paycheck of this hard working family.

Many can’t afford this loss from their paychecks. When we all took a deep collective breath after the fiscal cliff fiasco, none of us realized that there was still an itty bitty cliff the working man was going to fall off of no matter what happened.

Lines at our food banks are lengthening, people are barely hanging on by their fingernails and along comes another tax to make sure they can’t make ends meet. In my work with homeless families, I see the effect that more taxes has on struggling people. There’s no good reason to have let this tax break expire at a critical time in our nation.

I am definitely unappetized by the direction our President has taken at the start of his second term.

Tags Families fiscal cliff IRS money obama paycuts payroll Struggling taxes