According to the Tea Party, we are the paying the highest taxes in the history of the universe. To hear them tell it, every dime they make goes to pay for some lazy bureaucrat to sit in their luxurious office in Washington D.C. and chortle over their brandy and cigars while the poor shlubs with the funny hats rally in the streets. That makes for a good story on Fox, but it’s basically fiction, just like everything else dreamed up by the something-for-nothing crowd.

Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation’s economy, Uncle Sam’s take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.

And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

That may sound like heaven to the Tea Party crowd until they realize that taxes pay for all those things they take for granted such as roads,public safety, and their little Rascal scooters.

On another level, lower taxes can wreck the economy just as much as taxes that are too high. After all, if lower taxes were supposed to be such a boon to the nation, explain why the economy was basically flat during the eight years of the Bush administration. They’ll tell you it was because Bill Clinton had sex with an intern and Al Gore is fat.