A new piece today in the Washington Post suggests that Obama administration officials and members of Congress alike are considering the possibility of a VAT, or value-added tax, which would impose a levy on all goods and services in order to cover the nation's gi-fucking-normous budget deficit. Along with raising taxes on the highest earners, the idea of a VAT seems to be gaining traction as something that has worked for 130 other countries worldwide.

Both Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's brother), who's serving as a health care advisor to the President, and former Fed chair Paul Volcker who's serving as a tax advisor, have allegedly expressed interest in such a tax -- which would add a surcharge onto everything from a pack of gum to a haircut. Some see the tax as one of the only ways out of the hole we're in while also funding Obama's trillion-dollar expansion of health care coverage. Crazy, you say? This tax-despising nation would never stand for it and it unfairly impacts the poor?