Wealth & Money Quote by William Proxmire

Proxmire lands the compliment with a priestly thud: absolute mastery, delivered in a single, crowd-friendly image. The line works because it borrows the aura of infallibility from religion and smuggles it into the drab world of deductions and loopholes. Everyone in the audience knows what the Lord's Prayer represents - something recited so often it becomes muscle memory. So when Proxmire says someone knows the tax code that well, he isn't just praising intelligence; he's certifying total immersion in a system most people experience as opaque, punitive, and faintly absurd.

The intent is political and tactical. Tax policy is where voters tend to assume they're being hustled, either by Washington or by the rich. By invoking the pope, Proxmire frames expertise as a kind of moral authority, implying the person in question can navigate complexity without being corrupted by it. That's a sly move for a politician known for watchdog populism: he often positioned himself against waste, gimmicks, and special-interest games. Here, mastery of the tax code isn't nerdy; it's protective.

There's subtext, too: the tax code as scripture, full of arcana, interpreted by a clerisy of accountants and lobbyists. Proxmire's comparison flatters the expert while also hinting at the larger indictment - that ordinary citizens are effectively laity, dependent on insiders to translate the text that governs their lives. In one neat metaphor, he boosts a technician and critiques the temple.