How can the president talk about raising anyone’s taxes, when there hasn’t been a budget approved in nearly four years. The House has presented a budget, and so has the president, but the Senate has refused to pass anything other than to defeat both the president’s budget and the House budget. I say pox on these talks! Let’s have Congress pass a budget that includes a way of paying for it — be it higher taxes, or less spending, or a combination of both. 

This entire debate really is very silly! It is easy to pick out a small group of people and force them to pay more in taxes, while it really won’t solve the problem. The last I heard was that if the president got his tax increase, it would only pay for 8 days of the cost of government. By actually providing a budget that reduces the size of government back to 18 percent of GNP, the tax issue will become moot.

— Jim Mallery

Anchorage