Column: Al Arends, My Point of View

Dear Mr. President and Congressmen:

I have enclosed a promissory note for your children and grandchildren to sign. It is an obligation that you have passed on to all of the future generations to pay. With our national debt more than $16 trillion and obligations to my generation for Medicare and Social Security, it is very difficult to see how they are going to ever be able to enjoy the lifestyle that you and I have enjoyed. You have created a system where the income of our government is $2.5 trillion per year, but you are spending $3.5 trillion. Are you going to continue on this path or are you going to make difficult decisions that will give our children some hope for the future?

Sincerely,

A concerned mother and father

P.S. And by the way, please renegotiate this note every time you increase the debt ceiling so your children will know how much more they will have to pay for the debt we are leaving them.

That is a letter I would like to write to our president and Congressmen, but this is something they already know. One party says all we have to do is increase the taxes on the 1 percent, or those making more than $250,000, and it will solve our problems. We now hear that if they take 100 percent of all the money people make over $250,000, that it would only keep the government running for 92 days. Oh, but it would help, wouldn’t it? Maybe and probably not. If we look at when Bill Clinton was president, we had higher taxes for just about all the people in the U.S., and we had a balanced budget. We have to remember that we were in the beginning of the technology revolution and our economy was exploding with a whole new industry.

What is the other party saying? Let’s lower the tax rate by 20 percent, so that it will leave more money in the private sector to spur the economy and create more jobs. Has this ever been done before and will it work? The two most recent times when taxes were lowered was during the presidential tenure of John Kennedy and again with Ronald Reagan. Yes, it was a Democrat and a Republican who proposed lowering taxes to spur the economy and put people back to work with good paying jobs. John Kennedy even implemented the Investment Tax Credit, which spurred businesses to buy new equipment. That didn’t put money into the working man’s pocket directly, but it spurred businesses and farmers to buy new equipment, which helped put more people back to work.

These are ideas that don’t sound good to the average working person, because they know the rich can afford to pay more taxes. That is true, but will this help to put more people to work? I don’t think so and what bothers me is that our governor also wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. His proposal of raising the tax rate to 14 percent will make Minnesota the highest taxed state in the Union.

So, when you vote, please make an intelligent choice. What plan will help put more people back to work? John Kennedy, a Democrat, had to make a difficult decision to go against the ideas of his party. He elected to put people back to work by cutting taxes. This created more people paying taxes and increased revenue for the government to meet its obligations.

 

Al Arends is a member of the Freeborn County Republican Party.