© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

For most Americans, Christmas is a season for giving, said Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party national director yesterday. But for politicians, it's a time for taking things away. Their hidden travel taxes take away nearly half your buying power, which makes politicians the real-life Grinches who are trying to steal Christmas.

Local, state and federal governments impose taxes on hotels and lodging, gasoline and other fuels, bus, train and airline tickets, and other travel-related goods, services and products.

Combined, Libertarians say, the tax bill adds about 41 percent more to the overall cost of taking a trip -- which millions of Americans do during the holiday season.

The figures were tabulated by the Washington, D.C.-based Americans for Tax Reform.

According to Dasbach, without the added taxes:

After hearing about the government's very uncharitable plans for taxing your holiday travel, you might be tempted to just stay at home and save money by telephoning your relatives, Dasbach said. But you'd better think twice, because politicians have managed to double the cost of a phone call -- by imposing 18 different taxes on telephone companies and phone bills.

Dasbach added: Consider how much merrier Christmas would be if you could visit your family, make a phone call or give a gift without having to pay such outrageous taxes to greedy government Grinches.

In three days of meetings with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and congressional leaders from both parties -- completed on Tuesday -- President-elect George W. Bush reiterated his administration's campaign pledge to cut taxes by $1.3 trillion over the next decade.

Greenspan, who was a frequent critic of Bush's tax-cut plan during the campaign because he believes surplus funds should go to pay down the national debt, is blamed by former President George Bush for backing policies that caused an economic slowdown in the months prior to the 1992 election.

That economic slowdown, the elder Bush has said, was in many ways responsible for his re-election defeat at the hands of President Clinton.

Nevertheless, even Greenspan -- earlier this week -- has intimated that U.S. economic activity may be slowing once again, and he has signaled that the Fed may be prepared to slash interest rates at its January 2001 meeting, though the board voted Tuesday not to slash rates just yet.

While some inflation risks persist, they are diminished by the more moderate pace of economic activity and by the absence of any indication that longer-term inflation expectations have increased. The committee will continue to monitor closely the evolving economic situation, the Fed said.

Bush, as well as some congressional Republicans, believes that a continued economic slowdown would actually help raise support on Capitol Hill for Bush's tax cut plan.

On Monday, vice chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., in a letter, called on the Fed to cut rates while he implored lawmakers to pass new tax-cut measures to stem the sudden and significant downturn in U.S. economic growth and on Wall Street.

Yesterday, Bush also sounded a cautionary tone regarding the nation's current economic sluggishness when he nominated Alcoa Chairman Paul O'Neill as his Treasury secretary.

Noting that O'Neill would be a calming voice if the economy continues to slide, Bush said in Austin, Texas, I'm hopeful that this economy stays strong, but I'm also a realist, and one of my jobs is to think ahead, just in case.