Flip Wilson, a popular black comedian in the 1970s, excused all his misdeeds with: “The devil made me do it.”
The liberal New York Times in its "Some Breaks for Industries Are Retained in Fiscal Deal" uses a similar approach. The devil – in the form of lobbyists – made Congress add a “bevy of tax breaks and credits that had been scheduled to expire at the end of 2012….costing taxpayers $46.1 billion over the next decade.” As both parties slugged it out over each billion of tax increases and spending cuts, Congress found time to slip in almost fifty billion of pork for their corporate favorites.
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