Shifting the Debate Over Tax Cuts

I’m dismayed to see that President Bush’s tax cut proposal is a shoo-in for Senate passage (“Wrangling Delays Senate’s Vote on Huge Tax Cut Plan,” May 22). Setting aside the equities, I’m worried about what happens if our economy continues its tailspin and we find ourselves unable to pay for basic government services. Any student of modern U.S. history will recall that in presidential elections, talk of raising taxes has amounted to political suicide. It crippled the campaigns of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, and a flip-flop on that issue effectively sank the elder Bush’s reelection hopes.

If we cut $1.3 trillion from taxes today, what leader will have the political courage to raise them should future exigencies demand an increase? The Bushies have demonstrated with California’s energy debacle that their response to economic hardship is laissez faire capitalism. Don’t look to them for tax hikes. Will future Democrats be any more keen to follow in Dukakis’ quixotic footsteps? Does not the Bush tax cut, in its monstrous scope and de facto irreversibility, parallel California’s doomed energy deregulation scheme?

Diane Krieger

Torrance

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What The Times apparently does not understand is that the intention of the tax cut bill is just that, to provide tax cuts, not redistribution. But even Bush’s proposed income tax cut provides substantial redistribution from upper-to lower-income taxpayers. The reduction from 39.6% to 33% represents a one-sixth reduction in the tax rate, whereas reducing the lowest income tax rate from 15% to 10% is a one-third reduction. Any tax cut that is not proportionate redistributes income from one group to another. The original intention of income tax was for revenue, not redistribution.

To really benefit lower-income taxpayers, without such redistribution, Social Security should be fully privatized under a new pension plan. Congress should initially fund the new plan based on its true unfunded liability. Only then will senior citizens of all income levels receive the more substantial benefits they have paid for but which have been depleted by Congress.

Victor N. Viereck

North Hollywood

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Your editorial reminds us that the debated Bush-Congress budget accelerates the gross and growing maldistribution of wealth that brought us the Great Depression of 1929.

Jo Seidita

Northridge