A little humor?

There were two guys sitting at a table.  One was a tax expert.  The other was a banker. The banker asked the tax expert a complicated question about taxes. "This feels like an Abbott and Costello routine," the tax expert replied.

Yes, that was the "punch line" to actual comments masquerading as comedy tonight in the House Ways and Means Committee.  Some of the lobbyists sitting along the outside walls of the committee room laughed after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Shomshor — a Democrat from Council Bluffs who is a tax expert in private life — made reference to Abbott and Costello, a duo ranked as America's most famous comedians in the 1940s and early '50s.

Later during the Ways and Means Committee meeting at the statehouse tonight, there was more laughter from the paid-to-be-there crowd when Representative Pat Grassley, the grandson of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said this:  "A little birdie told me he's pretty confident the tax cuts will expire."  (The tax cuts of which Pat Grassley spoke are the Bush-era tax cuts; Grandpa Grassley is the top-ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.)