"Carrying The Team on Their Backs!"

Just over a week ago the football season ended; I was sad. I really like football; my wife, not so much. A couple of days ago, I was watching the NFL channel, the program was called “A Life in Football”. This program profiles some of football’s greatest players. Now I don’t always watch this channel, and I’m sure my wife appreciates that, but on this night the profile was on Walter Payton. Understanding wife that I have, she suffered through the show as she knows how much I liked Walter. I remember watching him in the college all-star game before he was a legend, and I commented to my buddies that this kid could really help the Bears. I guess I was right about that. For years, Water was the Bears; there wasn’t much else to depend on from some of those early teams. Every yard he gained, he was carrying the Bears on his back. After Mike Ditka took over as Head Coach, things changed for the Bears and for Walter Payton. New players and new philosophy turned the Chicago Bears into a winner for the first time since the 1963 Bears won the NFL Championship (there was no Super Bowl back then). It took eleven men on offense and eleven men on defense, working as a team to make them great. Each player had a specific job to do, and each player was paid according to his skill level and the difficulty of his position. Walter couldn’t play as well as he did in those later years without those he depended on to play their positions properly. Walter was less than 10% of the team, but at times he was 90% of the offense; he was a major contributor to the team’s success, and I doubt that you could find any of his former teammates who would disagree with that statement.

In some ways, our economy works like a team effort. We have star players who shine because of their business sense. They take money and ideas and produce a successful enterprise that benefits them and those who are employed by them: in turn they, who have benefitted the most, pay the most in taxes. The top 3% of income earners in America are paying 97% of America’s taxes. I would have to say that they are definitely “carrying the team on their backs”, contrary to the statements of President Barack Obama! Mr. Obama wants even higher taxes on America’s job creators. He continues to make the successful into the villains for political fodder for his campaign rhetoric. His “smoke and mirrors” budget proposal is more warmed over “tax the rich” and “spend on government projects” which are the same economic clap-trap from his first three years in office.

If our ailing economy was like a football game and Barack Obama was the coach, it would be a game where the coach told one player to walk out on the field against eleven players on the other team, while those on the “bench” rested on their “laurels”. Forty per cent of Americans pay NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX. Three per cent of Americans pay 97% of America’s bills. Mr. President, let’s get the rest of the team OFF THE BENCH!!!