Taxing Our Relationship - By Id (~BBW, Politics, Romance)

[The Id]

~BBW, Politics, Romance - A new tax bill puts pressure on the Senators' relationship.

(Author's Note: I hope you'll all find this a suitable sequel to A Different Kind of Pork. Part of me feels this story should have been sexed up, but this is more about relationships and issues than anything else. So it is what is and I hope you like what it is!)

Taxing Our Relationship
By Id​

“We are in so much trouble,” I said.

“Only if people find out,” Ann said.

I rolled my eyes. “Everybody knows about it. It’s a matter of public record,” I said.

Ann sat up in bed next to me. “What?!” she exclaimed.

“I thought you understood how things work in the Senate. It’s not like you can keep something like this secret,” I continued, “Anyone can find out if they want.”

“But we’ve been so discreet!” Ann said worriedly, sitting up in bed.

“Oh come now,” I said putting my arm around her ample, soft waist and pulling her back into bed, “I know that it’s not pleasant right now, but over time they’ll forget.”

“This isn’t the sort of thing that people easily forget. This is career ending.”

“One bill rarely ends anyone’s career,” I said, “We might have bucked our parties this time, but I’m sure that we’ll be forgiven.”

Ann’s mouth fell open. “You were talking about the spending bill?”

“Weren’t you?” I said with the most innocent expression I could muster.

My conservative compatriot grabbed a pillow and started hammering me as hard as she could. “Don’t! You! Ever! Do! That! Again!” she said, punctuating each word with a drubbing of down.

I grabbed the pillow, now with a smile. “Oh come on. I can’t resist an opening like that,” I said.

“Just for that I get to be on top this time,” Ann said as she threw the pillow onto the floor.

“I didn’t know we had time for a second go around,” I said.

“We’re making time after you nearly scared me to death,” Ann said as she proceeded to straddle me with her juicy thighs, her soft, warm gut sliding forward on top of me as she did so.

I had decided a while back not to tell Ann that being on the bottom was no punishment for me. Accordingly, I sat back and received my sentence with ecstasy.

***

“Good morning,” I said as I breezed into my office. It was a decent office, but still one of the worse available. Such was the life of a freshman Senator. It was a little cramped for the needs of my entire staff, but I had a spacious office to myself, so that kept me happy enough. “What do we have this morning?”

My chief aide, Andy Kane, was immediately by my side. “Floor vote at ten this morning on some routine military promotions. Energy at eleven. Lunch with the National Solar Coalition when you finish the committee meeting. The Majority Leader has asked to see you this afternoon. His office asked if two would work.”

That was the last thing I wanted to hear. If the Majority Leader wanted to see me himself, this wasn’t grunt work. He would have sent Watson again for that. Of course, the last time he’d done that, I took the opportunity to create my bipartisan miracle with Ann, which I was sure was what I was being called in to account for. “Do I have room in my schedule at two?”

“We can make it fit,” Andy said.

I had been hoping that they couldn’t. “All right. Tell them I’ll be there at two.”

***

The Majority Leader’s office was one of the nicest in the Senate office buildings. It was so nice it wasn’t even in my building. I took the private subway that connected the three buildings and the Capitol together to get there. Its primary purpose was to ensure that Senators got to the floor for votes on time, but I always wondered what was so wrong about walking. Then again, I’m a mass transit nut, so I loved it.

I was admitted after a short wait to the Majority Leader’s office where the leader of my party in the Senate held court.

“Jack, thanks for making room in your schedule to see me today,” the Majority Leader said, shaking my hand. We sat down across each other at a small table. The Majority Leader never liked doing business behind a desk and no matter how tiny his office had been over his long political career, he always had a table and chairs at which to sit.

“How can I be of help today?” I asked to open the conversation up. I silently braced myself for the upbraiding I was sure to receive.

“First off, you showed some real initiative with the spending bill,” the Majority Leader said, “Though some people were disgruntled with the work that you did, including myself initially, it’s played out beautifully in the media, as I’m sure you know all too well.”

It was true. I’d experienced a 50% increase in emails and letters as a result of my highly public work on the bill. Most of them were praising me for my work on the spending bill. A few citizens lamented the loss of a given project and in such cases my interns wrote kind replies to expressing whatever my opinion on the project in question was, and if it was positive saying that I would support the measure if it ever came up for a floor vote on its own.

“Ever since then, public approval for the Senate as a whole has gone up,” the Majority Leader continued.

“Always something I like to hear,” I added, slightly shocked that I was sitting here and being patted on the back for exceeding orders. This wasn’t how politics worked. Unless…

“To get down to business, I’d like for you to take point on a new bill that we’ve got coming up,” the Majority Leader said, “Your recent notoriety will be a big asset in helping to get this through.”

So it was just a prelude to another “favor” for the party. I should have figured. “What’s the bill?”

“It’s a tax bill that’s coming out of the House. I’ve been assured by the Speaker that this is going to get a vote in the very near future and that it’s going to easily pass the House,” the Majority Leader said.

“I can tell this is going to be wildly popular already. Nothing that the people like more than taxes!” I said with a smirk to indicate my mock enthusiasm.

“This one’s not so bad. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this yet—” I was pretty sure the answer was going to be no. My staffers would tell me if there was anything important going on in the House and the moment I had no tax bills on my radar. “—but they’re going to vote in a few days on the junk food tax. It’s a major part of the President’s plan for promoting an active lifestyle, reducing the burden on our healthcare system, and creating sustainable tax revenue to help reduce the deficit.”

“A junk food tax,” I repeated.

“I’m going to have someone send our talking points to your office by the end of the day,” the Majority Leader said, “The Speaker has assured me that this is going to pass, so the next step is getting it introduced here just as soon as the House approves it, and you’re going to be our guy.”

“Well thank you,” I said, standing, “I’d best get right to work on it.”

“That’s just the sort of thing that’s going to help you become a major player here,” the Majority Leader said, shaking my hand for a second time, “We’ll have that info to you real soon.”

***

It wasn’t until I was headed back to my apartment that I was really able to think about the junk food tax. I read the highlights of the bill over dinner, as well as all of the points that the PR people in the party had come up with to sell the idea to the public. As a revenue source, it was solid. People would never give up their chocolate, not even with the measly additional tax that was being talked about here. Two cents on soft drinks—estimated to bring in $3 billion annually—another cent on other sweets like candy and other junk food.

It’s just three cents, part of me said, Think of what can be done with those revenues, even if it’s just paying down the deficit. It made a lot of sense. This was not an undue burden economically for the vast majority of people, as the numbers I’d been given testified. Even in low income families, the briefing said, would not experience a “significant” burden.

That may be true, but it’s the principle of the thing, the other part of me said. That was the part that was speaking to me more—much more. From an economic perspective, even if it was a small burden for low income families, a lot of people lived paycheck to paycheck. It might only be a few cents here, a few cents there, but it would add up over time.

Then there was the issue of choice. I wasn’t a smoker, which made it easy for me to support taxes on cigarettes. After all, they caused cancer. And alcohol…well I liked a drink from time to time, but it seemed decent to tax that considering the stupid things people did when they got drunk. But junk food? Just because something had so many calories or so much sugar, did that mean it should be taxed? As a society, did we really want to make it more expensive to eat something that tasted sweet? Ostensibly, the idea was not just to create a revenue steam, but “to encourage healthier lifestyle choices”. Eating too many carbs was an unhealthy lifestyle choice, but nobody was suggesting taxing bread and pasta. If we really wanted to encourage people to be healthier, why not make gym memberships tax deductible? But there was no provision for that anywhere in the bill.

It was this disparity that I found disturbing, and the party’s analysis implicitly acknowledged it. “Under no circumstances should this be referred to as a ‘snack tax’, ‘obesity tax’, or a ‘fat tax’,” the talking points said, “Polling indicates that more voters support a ‘junk food tax’, likely due to the negative connotation of the term ‘junk food’, than they do any other name for the measure. Voters do not want to be told that their snacks are being taxed, and many voters feel that a tax that singles out fat/obese people is unduly prejudicial.”

And a growing part of me thought that those people were cutting to the heart of the matter. However, the pragmatic part of me recognized that this was my opportunity to make up with the party brass. Even though I hadn’t been chewed out by the Majority Leader today, I knew there was no way that I was very popular with the party brass right now. I’d been handed a gift on a silver platter—the ability to get back in the good graces of the people who could advance my career most. I knew that if I spurned them again, I would likely not get another chance for a very long time.

It was just as I was thinking about this that a knock came on my door. I knew exactly who it was. I quickly put the papers regarding the bill into my attaché case and threw it into my closet on my way to the door.

I opened the door to find Ann Jennings, as I had expected. “Good evening,” she said stepping inside. After she’d shut the door behind her she kissed me.

“Nice to see you too,” I said, “Pizza should be here soon.”

“Does that mean we can’t start in on the beer?” Ann said, holding up a six pack.

“Has that ever stopped us before?” I asked. The answer was a resounding no.

“How was your day?” Ann asked as she searched for my bottle opener in my kitchen.

“Oh, you know, just the usual grind,” I replied casually from the other room.

I never fully figured out why I lied that night to Ann.

***

I stayed awake long after Ann had drifted off to sleep, thinking about the junk food tax. I had my opportunity to mend fences and help my career in the long term, but somehow voting for the bill seemed like a giant piece of hypocrisy. If I’d been a private citizen, I could have just kept my head down and not taken a side. If I declined to sponsor the bill, I could always vote ‘Present’, but I’d railed against that many times in my career. Present was the same thing as Nay, but without actually saying so. It was a stupid parliamentary procedure that I’d eliminate if I could. I wasn’t going to do that here.

I turned my head to look at Ann’s face, her cute nostrils flaring regularly as she inhaled while she slept, her full lips parted just slightly. I loved the puffiness about Ann’s face. It was cute without being too fat. I reached up and gently brushed one of her fair cheeks. It was then that I realized I’d never told Ann outright that I liked the fact that she was fat. I didn’t know if that made things better or worse when it came to my voting predicament.

Part of me just wanted to forget it until tomorrow and just enjoy the here and now. Ann and I had decided a while back we shouldn’t see each other very often so as not to attract attention. The last thing we needed was the Post breaking the story that two Senators—from opposing parties no less—were sleeping together. Could even make for a Pulitzer Prize if we got lucky, I considered. I returned my thoughts to Ann and put one arm around her thick waist to enjoy the pillowy bulk next to me. Ann responded to the touch in her sleep by rolling in closer to me. In fact she rolled over so that she wound up being somewhat on top of me.

I didn’t mind a bit. Her large breasts were pressed up against me, her nipples pointing through her bra and into my body. Her belly was forced upwards and onto me by the fact that it had nowhere to go but up with the twin pressures of the bed and my side guiding it. Ann unconsciously wove one sturdy thigh in between my own legs, intertwining us to an even further degree. One arm had been thrown across my chest, allowing me a perfect view of her flabby upper arm in my supine position. Ann looked like a big, fat angel, lying in bed next to me. Never had I dated anyone as fat as Ann, and never had I liked anyone more than I liked Ann. Since Ann had me rather pinned down, I just craned my neck out a bit and gave her a kiss on the cheek in acknowledgement of how much I adored Ann.

Ann’s eyes then fluttered a bit before they cracked open. “Hey,” she said softly. She repositioned herself from her slightly awkward position so she lay on her side but still up against me so we could enjoy each other’s bodies.

Just as Ann shut her eyes again I said, “There’s something I need to say.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Ann said, declining to open her eyes.

“It’s important.”

“Life and death important? If not, it can wait until morning.”

“No, but just below that,” I said.

“Do I have to move to listen?” Ann said, eyes still shut, “I’m super comfortable right now.”

“No, but I have to tell you right now,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’ve said this to more than five people alive, but I need to say it to you. Ann…I like…” I paused. This was why I didn’t say this to many people, and very, very rarely to women. How do you tell a woman—a fat, self-confident, intelligent woman—that you like fat women without offending them. “…bigger women.”

“Of course you do,” Ann mumbled sleepily.

I rolled my eyes. Naturally when I’d finally get up the courage to tell Ann my innermost desire she wouldn’t be awake enough to understand it. “No no. I really like bigger women.”

“Yeah. And I said that I know you do,” Ann said, opening her eyes a little wider, though not moving her head off of its resting place on my shoulder. “You’re talking about this as if it’s a big secret.”

“Isn’t it?” I asked. I mean, it was a big secret to me. Hence the fact next to nobody knew about it.

“Oh come on Jack. Nobody I’ve ever worked with in the capital has ever been as dedicated to their work to come to my apartment to work on a bill, even one that’s got a deadline on it. You were either the most dedicated civil servant I’ve ever met or you had a more personal reason for being so eager to get back to my place,” Ann said with a smile as she tickled my stomach. I playfully swatted her hand away. “I don’t suppose that you thought I actually conducted Senate business while in my lingerie, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“I know when a man wants me, and, thanks to past experience, I can tell why he wants me to. The way you made love to me proved it,” Ann said, “Guys who like big girls make love much differently than someone who’s just looking to have sex for the hell of it. You’re nowhere near the latter.”

“I wish you could have said something to save me the trouble of having to wake you up,” I said.

“No, you mean so you didn’t have to work up the courage to say it,” Ann said, “I’m not letting you off the hook that easy when it comes to being a man, Senator Thornton.”

“You know we used to not let women vote in this country for just such an attitude as that,” I said.

“Didn’t you win the women’s vote in your election?” Ann said.

“That is completely beside the point,” I retorted, but it was true.

“Just saying. Now if you want we’ll continue this conversation in the morning,” Ann said as she nuzzled up against me with closed eyes to try and get some more sleep.

“But having gotten this confession off my chest has been very arousing,” I whispered into Ann’s ear.

She put a finger on my lips to silence me. “Let me finish,” Ann whispered back without opening her eyes, “We’ll continue the conversation tomorrow morning…in the shower.”

How I got to sleep with such anticipation is beyond me.

***

I was conveniently detained by matters other than the junk food bill for the remainder of the week. It wasn’t until I turned on the national news one evening over my usual unimpressive dinner (the only decent meals I had these days were courtesy of Ann, whose mother had a great love of cooking that had completely rubbed off on her daughter) that I was reminded of the topic.

“In news from the Capitol today, the House passed a new tax on junk food items in an effort to promote healthier lifestyles,” the news anchor said, “The passage of the bill has been heralded as a major victory in the battle against obesity.”

They then cut over to remarks from Representative Simon, one of the sponsors of the bill. “As it stands, there is no upfront economic benefit for people to make healthy choices in eating. This leads to much greater costs down the line for our entire healthcare system.”

“The bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate later this week,” the anchor said before moving onto the next news story.

With the bill having passed the House I knew that if my phone didn’t ring tonight with a call from the Majority Leader’s office confirming that I’d be introducing the bill, it would do so tomorrow morning. There was no more putting it off now.

Idly, I flipped to the next channel, which had one of its nightly political roundtables on. I usually didn’t watch this channel’s news coverage since it was well to the right of my personal politics and I generally couldn’t stomach it. However, I could tell from the banner at the bottom of the screen that they too were discussing the junk food tax bill I thought I’d see what was being said on the side of the political spectrum tonight.

“Look, this bill invades the personal privacy of every person in this country,” the acerbic blonde was saying as she jammed her finger into the news desk for emphasis. I knew from the little of watched of her in the past that I rarely agreed with her positions, and I also disliked her strident form of communicating her message. “It is not the government’s place to come into people’s lives and tell them what to eat. What’s next? The draft? Arranged marriages for achieve some ‘ideal societal outcome’? Please.”

“This is just another instance of west coast, or should I say left coast, liberalism,” another pundit said, “It should come as no surprise then that we’ve been told that Senator Thornton, a self-proclaimed ‘moderate’, is set to introduce this bill in the next few days for consideration in the Senate.”

I don’t know which dropped quicker, the remote from my hand or my jaw. I didn’t even hear the rest of what the show had to say. I was in such shock that I wasn’t listening anymore. There was only one thing in my head.

I am so screwed.

***

I went through the entire next day in fear of one thing or another. The first thing I was afraid of was being accosted by reporters on my way into my office, but apparently nobody cared enough to follow around a freshman Senator that hadn’t actually introduced a tax bill yet. Once that barrier was passed, I allowed myself to be afraid of more important things, like getting a call from the Majority Leader to find out when the bill was going to be introduced. Even worse would be if Ann happened to show up in my office and demand to know what I was doing sponsoring this bill. But none of that happened. In fact, it was a pretty regular day.

I knew that the end of business didn’t mean I was out of the woods. I was supposed to see Ann at her place tonight and I knew I was going to get the what-for. The truth was that I still didn’t know what to do. From one perspective, my hand had been forced somewhat since my name was now being bandied about with the bill. To not sponsor it now would definitely grab some attention—and the last thing that the party wanted was more attention for a tax bill. But the more I thought about it, the more distasteful supporting this bill became.

I knocked on Ann’s apartment door and braced myself for the worst. “Good evening,” Ann said pleasantly with a smile, clad in an apron, “I’ve just put the pasta in. Your timing is perfect.”

“I do try,” I said as I stepped inside.

“Want some wine while you wait? I’ve got a bottle of red open from making the sauce,” Ann said as she returned to the stove.

“No, not tonight. At least not yet,” I said.

“All right,” Ann said, “Anything big today?”

I was shocked that Ann hadn’t heard, but I reflected that perhaps I shouldn’t have been. The conduits of information are always flowing on Capitol Hill, so the chances that her office was unaware of my supposed link to the junk food tax were miniscule. But it was much more possible that there was no reason why her staff would mention my name in connection with the junk food tax to Ann. After all, she had much more important things to do than hear who was sponsoring what bill and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to tell her staff that she wanted to keep tabs on me more than any other Senator. That would be asking for people to get suspicious and begin digging into our connection.

All of this meant that I was scot-free. I had plenty of time to figure out what I was going to do—except I realized that I didn’t. I had to tell Ann now while I could still have it come from me.

“Kind of. You hear about that junk food tax bill?” I asked.

Ann didn’t turn around from the stove where she was stirring the pasta so it didn’t burn in the pan. “Yeah. You guys so bored that you tried to think up the most unpopular thing you could?”

“Beats me whose bright idea this was,” I said, “Well, the Majority Leader wants me to be the sponsor in the Senate.”

That got Ann’s attention. She stopped her work and turned around. “You actually support this thing?” Ann asked in surprise.

“Well I don’t know. I mean, not really, but it’s a great opportunity for me to mend fences,” I replied, trying to explain the position I was in, “I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I haven’t exactly been in the good graces of the party leaders since the appropriations bill.”

“And what did you expect? A parade for being all good and honest?” Ann said, putting the wooden spoon down in the pan, placing her hands on her wide hips, “We both knew what we were getting into when we started gutting that bill and now you’re want to toe the party line?”

“But I haven’t decided anything about it yet. I don’t even know if I’m going to do it. I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since he asked me last week!” I said, starting to get a little impassioned. I realized much too late my mistake.

“What do you mean ‘last week’?” Ann asked, the tone of her voice somewhere between shocked and indignant, “Are you telling me that we slept together while you were thinking about whether you were going to support this bill?”

“We keep our relationship free of politics. This has nothing to do with us,” I countered.

“This is not a bill about polar bears or airline regulations. This is about a fat tax and anything you say to the contrary is utter bullshit,” Ann said, her cheeks growing flush with anger, “You laid in bed with me and told me that you love fat women and all the while you were considering taxing junk food. My God, do you even listen yourself sometimes? You’re no better than anyone else in the Senate, kowtowing to the party to advance your career. It’s disgusting.

“You know there was part of me that wanted to be you not too long ago. I mean, you don’t even have to think about an election for another five years and I’ve got less than eighteen months before I have mine. You’ve got five years with which to do amazing work. You and I can do more good in a month than some people can do with their entire lives. If I was you, I wouldn’t even run for reelection so I didn’t have aides and campaign managers telling me I needed to say thus-and-so for this group of voters, just so I could do things that would actually help people. Now I wouldn’t want to be you if I got to serve thirty years in the Senate. I’d rather have less than two principled years than thirty years of politically convenient hogwash.

“Now get out,” Ann said, pointing at the door, “Just leave.”

“Fine then. Be that way,” I said spitefully. I hadn’t even been given a chance to defend myself and I knew I wasn’t going to get one. I opened the door and was about to leave when Ann’s voice stopped me.

“By the way, there’s enough pasta for two people here. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just eat it all myself. Too bad you won’t be around to see it. I know you’d enjoy it,” Ann said.

I slammed the door behind me, half out of anger, half because Ann was right. The thought was more than a little arousing and I knew that I was going to think about her and all that pasta for the rest of the evening.

***

 

[The Id]