Gap Between Rich and Poor Not on GOP Agenda

My church peeps keep me busy. The Elizabethton Star published this letter today from Judy Garland. I love this line:

This must be OK with Mr. Roe and his party as they don't think the astronomically wealthy individuals and corporations should pay taxes at rates equal to, say, the rates of their chauffeurs.

Here is the letter:

Editor:

Representative Roe's latest email is about (shock) something else he's found wrong in the new health care law. I could suggest a more productive use of his time.

First, he could direct his attention to the rising cost of employer-sponsored health insurance. American workers' pay raises routinely disappear in increases in premiums. Employers find they can't afford both wage increases and decent health coverage. Kaiser Family Foundation reports cost of coverage for a family of four increased 131 percent from 1999 to 2010. Yet Mr. Roe and his party spread their protective net around Big Insurance and offered no relief to America's workforce. Cost trend surveys indicate insurance costs will continue to dwarf average employee earnings. Why isn't this on Congress' Republican-controlled agenda?

Might we hear, too, discussion of the widening income gap between our poorest and our richest? That gap has become one of the widest in the world, pairing us with Mexico with almost identical spans. Mr. Roe and his party seem somehow assured that the average pay package for company heads in the Standard & Poor's 500 was $9 million in 2010, up 24 percent in one year. I wonder if they heard one of them remark that in this global economy upward income movement in emerging nations is far more important to them than the downward movement of income levels in the country which has served them so richly.

This must be OK with Mr. Roe and his party as they don't think the astronomically wealthy individuals and corporations should pay taxes at rates equal to, say, the rates of their chauffeurs. Sure wish he'd use his emails and op eds to discuss it.

It's suggested, too, that Congress spends no time on job creation ideas because better job reports will hurt Republican chances in 2012. I think I believe it.

Judy Garland
Johnson City