Letter to the Editor

Your taxes are still going up

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Dear editor:

Kelly Everitt's editorial, "More Political Theater" was biased as normal, but also included a couple of glaring errors.

1) Payroll taxes are going up from 4.2% to 6.2% but that is where they were two years ago-not before the Bush tax cuts as stated in the editorial. In addition the claim that the Bush tax cuts resulted in borrowing to pay for Social Security ignores the fact that the Social Security trust fund was first raided during the Johnson administration and the practice has continued ever since.

2) The claim that taxes on those making over $450,000 a year are only going up about 3% was also somewhat misleading. The actual increase is 4.6% for ordinary income, but there is also an additional 5% on investment income plus a 3.8% Obamacare surtax on top of that. (Not much of an incentive to save and invest). The editorial then blamed the whole "fiscal cliff" on Tea Party Republicans resorting to name calling such as "clowns" and "crazy, stupid people." Real nice!

If you really want to know what caused the "fiscal cliff" I recommend reading Bob Woodward's book "The Price of Politics.".It was published this past spring and is an objective look at the politics that led to the cliff. Finally it is interesting that a president who voted against raising the debt ceiling as a senator is now demanding a blank check to raise the debt ceiling as much and whenever he wants.

Now that is real political theater.

-- Eddie Bush