GOP Budget’s Impact on Poor

Re “GOP Budget Plan Would Put Burden on the Poor,” Oct. 29: Has the GOP-led Congress lost its collective head? “Let them eat cake,” although erroneously attributed to Marie Antoinette, nevertheless summed up the disdain of France’s ruling elite for the poor. The heads which rolled in a social blood bath two centuries ago might very well be tossed again.

If the richest 5% benefit from the tax breaks and we break the backs of the working poor, the elderly, and families with children, it takes no wisdom to predict the anger, the rise in crime and hatred which will consume this nation. This is the most shortsighted, self-indulgent, political shame and sham ever pulled on the American people.

EILEEN McDARGH

Dana Point

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* Both Kevin Phillips and John Heilemann (Opinion, Oct. 29) continue to rant and rave with their own versions of the all too familiar liberal whine--the GOP targets the poor while asking few sacrifices from those who are most well-off! It’s time we honestly face the facts. The preliminary tax data for 1993 indicates that the top 5% of income earners paid 47.3% of all federal income taxes. The bottom 50% of Americans paid only 4.8% of all personal federal income taxes.

Under the guise of caring and social engineering, the government has systematically punished achievement and labor with high taxes, while rewarding indolence and irresponsible behavior with more benefits. Achievers are taxed when they earn, when they spend, when they invest, when they die and when their children inherit.

For years, achievers remained silent for fear of being called greedy and selfish for complaining. But achievers are silent no more. In the November, 1994, election, common sense prevailed.

TERRY PAULSON

Agoura Hills

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* As a 49-year-old mother, two-job holder, making approximately $18,000 a year, I have deeply appreciated and wisely used my earned income tax credit. Unusual attitude perhaps, but I proudly paid taxes the years I earned $45,000 a year. I have come to face the fact that because of circumstances, I am now what is called working poor. Love and moral priorities dictated investing myself in my children, and they are decent, fine adults: one working disabled, living with me; two others, supporting themselves, one finishing a master’s degree assisted partly through a student loan he is repaying and a Pell grant.

I look down the road and I fear losing my home to pay medical bills and deductibles when I am a senior citizen.

I feel sad and helpless when I see my 18-year-old, who may not have a grant or loan to help with his education. I look at my physically and mentally disabled daughter, and really wonder if she will have the medical care and medicine she may need in the future or that the small SSI check that helps support her will get even smaller.

EMMA EMERSON

Silverado Canyon

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* In her Oct. 29 Column Left, Lila Garrett asks: “What does the right wing in America want?” It seems to me that she is asking the wrong question. We should be asking ourselves: What do we, as citizens in a democratic society, want?

Do we desire to live in a country where the budget is balanced, but children beg in the streets and the ranks of the poor are swelled beyond imagining? Do we truly desire an America in the next millennium with no public culture, no viable public education, no health care for the majority of its citizens?

Are we willing to settle again and again for the political leaders who most efficiently push our hot buttons, rather than holding them (and ourselves) accountable for the wasteland America is rapidly becoming?

BONNIE K. SLOANE

Los Angeles

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* I’m really fed up with the attitude that government owes people.

My mom and dad worked for many years and the only thing they got from the government was larger tax bills. My wife and I are lower-middle-class workers who will be working for a living until we drop dead at our jobs. We don’t own a house, we have no children, our cars are older than many of the people we work with at our respective jobs. We need two incomes just to afford rent, food, gasoline, insurance, water, electricity and gas. We are lucky that both of our employers offer health insurance, to which we contribute.

We have never thought that government owes us anything more than a secure nation free from invasion from foreign powers. The people clamoring for increasing entitlement benefits need to seriously mature and do realistically what it takes to make it.

WADE STEINFELD

North Hollywood