To the Editor:
I read with great amusement Jeff Morris’ partisan Aug. 23 letter accusing President Barack Obama of doubling the budget deficit, written as Morris flew off as a Republican convention delegate to nominate Mitt Romney (aka Thurston Howell III) to lead us.
When you add the TARP program that George W. Bush instituted to bail out the banks in 2008, his final budget deficit as he mercifully left the scene was $1.3 trillion. Morris’ claim is nonsense.
How to fund “entitlements,” Social Security and Medicare, will be the main priority for the next president. If politicians want to “reform” middle- and working-class entitlements, let us also demand that they include the other less-spoken-of entitlement of the wealthy, the low taxation of capital gains income for financiers like Romney himself. This is a position Obama may be goaded into adopting if we push him. Romney? Not a chance.
Interestingly, the budget proposed and passed in the U.S. House by Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, would do away with the capital gains tax on investments, basically relieving Romney of any required contribution to our society. Not only that, Ryan’s budget would do away with the estate tax that 98 percent of us will never pay.
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said, “The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes ... .”
It makes you wonder how the party of TR, Lincoln and Eisenhower has changed over time from freedom for the slaves, establishment of the National Park System and building of the Interstate Highway System, to one concerned with invading the privacy of women, denial of climate change and the protection of those who have achieved great wealth using a rigged system.
No, Mr. Morris. Your party’s supply-side economic system has ruined America. A vote by a middle- or working-class citizen for Romney will be a vote for further entrenchment of a tax system that is currently rigged against those of us who work for a living.
Roy Lehman
Woolwich Township
