Balanced Budget, Tax Proposals

Regarding the balanced budget amendment proposal: How can they talk about the government operating like a family, that is, on a balanced budget? What family has no deficit that it feels cannot be justified? The mortgage on the family home, the loan on the needed car, the credit card charges that help that family through cash-flow problems to buy essential goods and services. How about borrowing money to send children to college, and loans to invest in tools and other materials to start up a family business?

Where would our economy be if everyone lived on a balanced budget? Most of us would be near the end of our lives before we could afford a decent home. These are the important questions: Are the things for which we are going into debt worth it, and is there a realistic expectation that it will be repaid?

The deficit and the balanced budget are distractions from the real solutions. Let us provide a healthful environment and infrastructure (family home), upgrade our degraded highways, streets, and transportation (family car), finance the best education and health system in the world, and make it possible for our citizens to succeed in pursuing their dreams.

SYLVIA S. LAMONT

Gardena

* Let’s hear it for taxes!

These days we hear nothing but complaints about taxes. But comes a disaster and the papers are full of hero stories. On TV we see Caltrans employees working their hearts out under horrendous conditions to keep us safe. We see firefighters and police and lifeguards risking their lives daily to protect us.

And where does the money come from to keep them on the job? Taxes! (Applause.)

Overdrawn? Of course, but we taxpayers are blinding ourselves with generalities. We say taxes are too high, but we don’t say which tax-paid employees we don’t want in place when we need them. We rail against “special interests,” but we’re unclear about which interests are “special” and which are our own. We lump all “entitlements” together and blame the lot for higher taxes than we want to pay.

Let the debate rage! But let it be on specifics. We taxpayers, who are also voters, need to force ourselves first and then our representatives in government to cease hiding behind generalities. And after the debate has separated the wheat from the chaff, let us admit that if we truly want to live in a civilized, humane and free society--a society of opportunity for all--we need to stop demonizing taxes and view them simply as the price of admission.

MARGARET CUENOD

Altadena

* In 333 BC when Alexander the Great entered Persia, he was shown the Gordian knot and told that whoever unraveled the ghastly tangle would become ruler of the Persian empire. After looking at the mess for a moment, he took out his sword, cut the knot and went on to rule the empire anyway.

Today, Newt Gingrich in his “contract with America” is proposing to unravel another sort of Gordian knot: bureaucracy.

This cannot be done; it needs to be cut--and with one bold stroke called the sunset law, which would automatically eliminate any department, bureau, office, program or provision unless continued for a specified number of years by a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate.

In turn, government would be down-sized, the budget balanced and the people’s confidence restored.

ROBIN WHITE

South Pasadena

* It is obvious that the flat tax is just another income tax, with all of the drawbacks associated with such. It does nothing to address the underground economy, which at this time is almost completely untaxed. It is well-known that the drug trade involves billions of dollars. There are billions of untaxed dollars earned in the service and construction industries as well.

The consumption tax would make those participating in untaxed industries pay their fair share and ironically, even some of the cost related to drug enforcement. The consumption tax would completely eliminate the IRS from the lives of the ordinary wage earners. There are many documented cases of people out there who were hounded for years to pay small tax bills that quickly escalated into impossible-to-pay, monetary monsters because of incredible interest rates and cruel penalties.

The elimination of the income tax would end the tax-driven class war that has been waged in this country since the initiation of the income tax. The elimination would greatly hamper social engineering, it would end the penalization of married people, it would end the resentment felt by many over the non-taxation of churches and other so-called nonprofit organizations and it would even mollify those who say that the income tax is unconstitutional.

LAWRENCE F. WASSEL

San Clemente