A Letter to the Editor From Thomas J. Meehan III

A Letter to the Editor from Berkeley Township resident Thomas J. Meehan III

I have read like many of the other readers the letter Congressman Tom MacArthur wrote to the Patch regarding the tax legislation just passed and signed into law by Congress and President Trump.

The congressman directs people to read the evaluation completed by the ITEP evaluation on dated December 16, 2017. The attached page shows the information in the state by state evaluation in New Jersey.

The general assessment of the legislation is stated on its introductory pages. My interpretation of the report as shown, does not reach the same conclusions the Congressman offered in his letter.

From the evaluation I read, the facts stated reinforce the understanding that this legislation benefits corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class .

The legislation as reported elsewhere states there is a clear divide for whom permanent tax cuts have been made, (corporations and the wealthy ) versus temporary tax reductions and changes for the middle class which expire in eight years.

Note: As the richest member of Congress from New Jersey and the sole largest contributor to his own campaign, (records show that he loaned his campaign $5 million, it would appear that as citizen, Mr. MacArthur will benefit the most as show in the charts.

The report is very clear about the rates and who benefits the most. We have seen and heard this before in the logic of trickle-down economics offered by the Republicans, which did not work then, and will not work now.

The premise or belief that these tax changes will result in enough growth to pay for the $1.5 to $2 trillion dollars added to the national debt cannot be proven.

What is clear is that future generations will be burdened with the debt they are now creating and what they will add next year with additional spending bills.

Congressman MacArthur is boastful about his part in the creation of this legislation and his efforts to save the $10,000 cap on state and local taxes.

In fact the original Senate version did not make any changes. Mr. MacArthur, while also boasting about the
repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandate, forgets to mention his contribution to the failed Repeal and Replace Act would have raised costs to seniors, allowed states to opt out of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would fail to help those most in need of healthcare, our children, the poor, and our seniors.
His non-support of gun legislation, while saying we do want to take guns away from
law abiding citizens is deplorable. The issue is how to have common sense gun legislation, which prevents the kill ratio from going up.

Republicans have already voted to allow the mentally incompetent to purchase weapons, carry concealed weapons across state lines, and made recommendations to provide for the sale of silencers and armor piercing ammo, which only allows those seeking to do harm to kill on a larger scale.

Photo: Patch archive photo