‘Entitlement Ogre: Funding for Everyone’

In “The Entitlement Ogre: Funding for Everyone” (Opinion, Aug. 21), Edwin J. Feulner Jr., president of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, continues to serve as a mouthpiece for the right wing by attacking entitlement programs that serve the middle-class and the poor.

The problem with people like Feulner, who write craftily designed articles to promote resentment against programs that provide for the needs of society, is that they look down at what they can take away from low- and middle-income families rather than up at the fat-cat corporations and super-rich who hold a sort of “favored nation” status in this country.

It is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in this country that is forcing households to earn two incomes to make ends meet not, as Feulner suggests, paying taxes to support retiree’s entitlement programs.

Feulner attacks Social Security, Medicare, Civil Service and military retirement programs which total, according to his figures, $340 billion. Of course, Feulner doesn’t mention the tax burden of the biggest “give-away” program of them all--the so-called “defense” budget. Feulner apparently thinks that having 54 cents of every tax dollar go to a military budget of approximately $300 billion a year is OK. In his world view stockpiling nuclear bombs is more worthwhile than providing for the housing, medical, education and retirement needs of our society.

LARRY SIEGEL

Hawthorne