GOP tax bill doesn’t ‘soak the poor’

Contributor Burdett (Sunday, Nov. 12) coined the phrase “soak the poor” to describe his reaction to the federal tax reform proposals in Congress. I hope he read the commentary by George Will in the same issue.

As Will noted, 45 percent of U.S. households pay no income tax, the bottom 50 percent of earners supply less than 3 percent of income tax revenue, and 60 percent less than 5 percent of their income. We are not “soaking the poor.”

Diverting attention from the real problem will never solve it. The fact is that Congress is out of control and has been for most of the past 60 years, continually spending more than taxes bring in and always seeming surprised that debt increases as a result. The 400-page GOP reform proposal is a travesty that makes taxes more complex rather than simplifying them, creates more debt, addresses only a few of the problems with the four million-word tax code and ignores the rest.

Both Democrats and Republicans need to come together and create a new system that makes sense. If they cannot do so, we need to vote them out and find people who can.

This story was originally published November 25, 2017 at 12:20 PM with the headline "GOP tax bill doesn’t ‘soak the poor’."