Taxation on Respiration

WASHINGTON- After hours of deliberation the house has passed the president’s Comprehensive Respiration Reform and Recovery Act of 2009.  The “Breath Tax Bill”, as its curmudgeon opponents have tagged it, seeks to impose a cap and trade style regulation over the amount of dangerous greenhouse gasses citizens are allowed to expel during the process of gas exchange.

Responding to the criticism implied in the bill’s rebranding congressman and co-author Henry Houseofwaxman had the following to say: “To call this thing the breath tax bill is so much hooey and strawman.  Clearly there is no tax involved in this bill and it does not seek to charge anyone anything for breathing; it is the exhalation of poisonous carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we are seeking to limit.  If a person, for some reason, must exceed the limit of allowable exhales then they are certainly free to buy carbon dioxide offsets from Al Gore.”

Surprisingly some environmental groups are also opposed to the bill.  Greensleeves representative Sage Pinebrush explains his groups position.  ”It’s not that this legislation is bad.  This legislation is, in fact, very good.  It just does not go far enough and I fear that once passed people will pat themselves on the back for a job well done and move on to the next order of business without realizing that this one hasn’t been completely dealt with yet.”  Pinebrush also worries that the language of the bill is ambiguous enough to allow for the rich to take advantage of the poor. “This bill regulates the volume of carbon dioxide expelled, so what happens when all the rich move to Colorado while the poor are stuck at sea level?” But Greensleeves has a plan to even the playing field.  ”We’re handing out balloons.  Balloons are wonderful because they are not biodegradable which means that they pretty much hang around forever.  So the plan is to hand out these balloons to poor people and lobby for a government works program to teach them how to breath into the balloons and then how to bury them in their backyards once they’ve been filled.  That way they can save the environment and their breath all at the same time.”

The Senate is expected to take up the debate on this matter when they return for the fall session.