By Tribune-Review

Published: Thursday, January 3, 2013, 9:01 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Anyone who thinks Congress' job is to raise taxes and continue reckless spending should consider this Congress a howling success.

Anyone who thinks increasing taxes on the rich will solve our budget problems must have missed the '70s, when rates as high as 90 percent only produced tax shelters. By lowering all tax brackets — and capping the top bracket at 28 percent — President Reagan in the '80s decreased unemployment and almost doubled tax revenue.

Two years ago, President Obama said it was the wrong time to raise taxes on anyone. What has changed? Even Bill Clinton came out last year and said the president's decision to support tax hikes was wrong. Raising capital gains rates to 20 percent will discourage job-producing investment and hurt many retirees who depend on their 401(k)s.

The president has added another entitlement program, ObamaCare, which we can't afford, to an already-endangered Medicare.

Spending is the problem. We should not allow the media and this administration to demonize tea party and conservative legislators who believe that tackling this issue is more important than raising taxes or creating class warfare by demonizing the rich.

If these arguments seem irrational or foreign to you, check out Sen. Rand Paul's YouTube or C-SPAN videos for more common sense that should appeal to the common man.

Michael Contes

New Kensington

1. Wise stewardship?
2. Pay it forward
3. More than security, sales
4. Dangerous roads
5. Don’t disparage the dyslexic
6. Put consumers in control
7. No surcharge
8. ‘Pippin’ a success
9. Utopian downfall
10. Hardly synonymous
11. Bad for farmers, eaters

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