Our Readers Write… Posted: Friday, December 14, 2012 7:00 pm
For our students’ sake, we must avoid the fiscal cliff
To The Editor:
We can wait and let the fiscal cliff happen so we the people will be slapped in the face with reality. Just what is reality? The school system and students will lose funding, cuts to basic health care, infrastructure, retirement, jobs. All the trickle down effect is like the childhood game of shoots and ladders. All we have achieved will shoot down. When we hurt then is it time for action? Get an up or down vote on the floor of representatives. Call your representative Steve Fincher at 202-225-4714 and ask for him to sign the discharge petition.
Billie Sue Blythe
Martin Congressional Republicans holding our tax rate hostage
To The Editor:
I’m one of the fortunate in the US: I have a good job, with a salary I can live on and health care insurance. But I’m also a senior citizen and a member of the middle class who has to make every penny count. If our taxes go up in a few weeks because our Tennessee Senators and Congressional Representatives insist on protecting the taxes of the rich at our expense, my income too, will shrink. I can’t imagine how deeply the increase in taxes that we’re facing will devastate many families in Weakley County.
At the end of December, the tax cuts initiated by President George Bush will expire. If that happens, our federal income taxes will go up significantly. President Obama is trying to ensure that for 100 percent of the American people, the tax rates on the first $250,000 of annual income do not go up. He wants to be absolutely certain that those who really depend upon that lower tax rate, those at the lower end of the taxable income scale, are protected. But his goal for us is threatened by those we’ve elected to serve us in Washington.
Do not be mistaken: it is the Republicans in Congress, especially in the House of Representatives, including our Tennessee representatives, who are holding our continued lower tax rate hostage on behalf of the wealthy. They are willing to have your taxes increase, when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of December, in order to accomplish their goal.
If the unwillingness of Tennessee’s Congressional representatives to act on your behalf is unacceptable to you, now is the time to act. Here in Weakley County, we each must let Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Bob Corker and especially our own Rep. Stephen Fincher to vote in favor of President Obama’s tax plan to renew the Bush tax cuts for those making $250,000 or less.
A significant tax hike, for most of us in Martin and Weakley County, is not a partisan issue; it will affect Democrats and Republicans alike. We must put aside our differences and together insist upon action by those individuals elected to serve the people of Tennessee. Call today.
Heidi Huse
Martin Published in The WCP 12.13.12 | 
