Wealth & Money Quote by Russell B. Long

Tax reform, in Russell B. Long's telling, is less a noble spreadsheet exercise than a neighborhood shakedown with better stationery. The line works because it punctures the sanctimony that always accompanies rewrite-the-code rhetoric: everyone claims to want a cleaner, fairer system, yet the political instinct is to keep your own bill flat and find a new, preferably faceless payer. The little sing-song cadence - "don't tax you, don't tax me" - sets up a childish innocence that makes the punchline land harder. Then comes the pivot to the "fellow behind the tree": an unseen, vaguely suspicious other who can be loaded up without triggering a voter revolt.

Long wasn't an outsider heckling the system; he was a powerful Senate finance chair from Louisiana, steeped in the horse-trading realities of mid-century tax politics. That background is the subtext. He's admitting, with a wink, that "reform" often means redistributing pain to those with less political leverage: unpopular industries, distant corporations, "special interests" no one will defend on talk radio, or simply taxpayers who are easier to ignore because they're diffuse or poorly organized.

The quote's real target is moral posturing. It anticipates how politicians sell tax changes as neutral technocratic improvements while quietly protecting constituencies at home. Long turns the whole debate into a visibility problem: if you can hide the target behind a tree, you can call it fairness and still get reelected.