Your Opinion: Economic ills; Fair Tax remedy

Dear Editor:

In the Aug. 21 Your Opinion, a contributor used the "d" word, default, and said that we were on the brink of "default." That was so far from reality that it does not even need to be rebutted. The income to the Treasury far exceeds the "required expenditures" such that "default" would not have happened.

In addition, this individual stated that "huge spending cuts will cost many jobs." As I stated in a previous letter, they are not cutting spending. Only in Washington is it true that if you reduce the increase in spending from 8 to7 percent, that is considered a cut. In fact spending still goes up 7 percent. Baseline budgeting does this and has been going on since President Nixon.

The writer also listed GE as having earned $3 billion in profits and paid no federal income taxes. While this is true and should be changed, their CEO Jeffrey Immelt is one of the current president's most ardent supporters and is on his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness task force. Maybe the president can talk to Jeff and get him to donate some of that $3 billion to help out the country that enabled GE to have such success.

Finally, he listed the statistic of Warren Buffett earning $46 million and paying only 17.7 percent taxes while his secretary earned $60,000 and paid 30 percent. The vast majority of Buffett's income was not from wages like his secretary. If Buffett thinks his taxes are not high enough he can always send the IRS additional funds, which Congress can then squander on additional useless programs.

If the writer would like to make things fair then he would be in favor of adopting the Fair Tax, which would level the playing field by eliminating the federal income tax and replace it with a consumption tax. Individuals such as Buffett consume much more expensive items than most middle class working people, so their tax would be much higher than the rest of us.