Tax Cut, Budget Negotiations in Congress

* Re “A Rich Source of Controversy” editorial, July 13:

The Treasury’s philosophy of imputing income for a paid-off mortgage is akin to saying the fastest way to double your money is to hold it up to the mirror.

HELENE BURKHOLDER

Oxnard

* Congress is seriously engaged in forging a tax-cut package. Here we are, with a debt of $6 trillion, still borrowing on the order of $100 billion a year, and getting ready to have a massive tax cut. Are we insane or merely stupid? Apparently we’ve decided that succeeding generations are ripe for pickpocketing once again.

There should be no discussion of tax cuts until we are no longer borrowing to run the government every year, and until we are actually paying down the debt.

The packages proposed in both houses of Congress are not simply tax cuts. They are tax redistributions as well: They include stipulations for raising taxes on airline flights, for revoking the tax-exempt status of the retirement funds of educational institutions and other tax increases that fall mostly on middle-class taxpayers. Congress is looking for ways to increase taxes on the middle class in order to give the wealthy a huge tax cut in the form of a capital gains tax decrease. Congress will throw a few crumbs to the middle class in the form of moderate increases in the deduction for dependents or for education.

The middle class has not experienced a shaft of this magnitude since Reagan’s tax “reform” of 1981.

ALEX MURRAY

Altadena

* The House of Representatives’ tax-cut bill punishes people trying to get a postgraduate education by eliminating the tuition remission tax waiver. These waivers allow a student to pursue a four- to six-year educational program, while serving as a teaching or research assistant. Students receive tuition and a modest cost-of-living salary (around $14,000 per year) for their efforts. These efforts provide the backbone of university research and teaching.

This bill could reduce graduate students’ after-tax wages by 50%. Should we really put our brightest minds into poverty? Is there any reward for excellence or effort? What happened to the govern- ment’s cries for improving education and making it available to all? Perhaps the congressmen behind this piece of legislation should look to their own bloated salaries, benefits and pension programs for answers to budgetary problems.

JOHN C. WHEELER

Venice