Michael Parker strikes again! The sock-it-to-the-rich liberals are pandering to the poor because there are so many of us, and we vote. Although many are totally unaware of what’s going on, we vote, usually for the candidates who promise to give us the most money from the Federal treasury.
We are in debt trillions of dollars and the liberals keep promising money to the poor to buy their vote. They promote class warfare by causing the poor to hate the rich, never realizing that the rich pay the lion’s share of the taxes.
Tax data released by the IRS for 2003 showed that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent and the top 25 percent paid 83.9 percent. That means that the middle class paid only 16.1 percent of the total income tax. The poor probably paid nothing, yet the liberals want the rich to pay more and more.
I wonder how many poor or middle class people have ever offered Mr. Parker a job, or did he even apply to them? It’s usually the people in the upper-income group who provide the jobs. When the tax rates are disproportionately adjusted, they, along with the rest of us, have less to spend, which causes the economy to slump.
Mr. Parker says the income tax isn’t enough to fund the federal budget, and he’s right. By the time the "porkers" get through throwing in their "earmarks" to buy their legislative seats, there definitely isn’t enough. It doesn’t seem to bother them that we are head over heels in debt, because they maintain their tax-and-spend mentality.
Mr. Parker ends his letter by saying, "Proudly pay your fair share," to which I do not object. What I do object to is our elected officials wasting our tax money on pork projects while refusing to fix things like Social Security and Medicare.
Now the Democratic candidates for president are leaning toward socialized medicine, which will destroy our health care system. Why do they think many Canadians are traveling to the U.S. to get treatment and paying out of their own pocket? It’s because they can’t wait six months to a year for a CT scan or other diagnostic procedures and even longer for an operation.
Bethel Midgett
Gainesville
Democrats kill a true middle class tax cut
While Mike Parker rants about most Americans not benefiting from President Bush’s tax cuts, his Democrats are in fact drastically reducing one of the most important tax cuts for the middle class.
The Democrats are cutting the tax credit for children, which President Bush’s cuts doubled. Before the Bush administration, this income tax credit allowed taxpayers to reduce their federal tax bill by up to $500 per child. President Bush’s increase allows them to take up to $1,000 per child; that’s a dollar-for-dollar cut in the tax bill.
The Democrats don’t like that cut. Instead, the Democrats are intent on taking the cut away. In fact, the proposed budget the Democrats released in mid-March drops it back to the old level of $500.
The increased child income tax credit continues to benefit tens of millions of middle class people, allowing many with two children to keep an additional $1,000 of their own money above the old level, $1,500 for three children, and so on.
And the Democrats are cutting this in half, returning to the pre-Bush level. So while the Democrats keep us watching the hand that says they will tax only the rich, they in reality hit the middle class hard.
The middle class can’t take much more help like this.
James R. Pilgrim
Gainesville