Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 6, 1993 TAG: 9304060394
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DON'T UP TAXES ON INDUSTRIOUS ELDERLY
IN DEALING with the huge deficit, President Clinton seems to overlook an important source of cuts: eliminate all pensions of all government employees, including congressmen, who left office due to fraud or other disgrace. Such pensions should never have been allowed at all and would have saved billions, not only in the pensions but in discouraging others from such crimes. It's a crime to reward these people and to punish taxpayers, by making them pay the bill for these pensions and all the graft and foolish spending Congress has arranged for at their frivolous night-lobbying parties.These fraud pensions should all be cut before any tax increase is put on Social Security benefits and other earned income.
According to the March NRTA-AARP bulletin, the tax on couples and individuals who have been taxed on 50 percent of their Social Security benefits will be taxed on 85 percent now. This is detrimental to those who were compelled to pay into it when Social Security started in 1935. Had they been allowed to opt out, they would have done much better managing their own money.
In spite of this drawback, many of these industrious oldsters who are in their 70s and 80s continue to be productive, happy and healthy. It's too bad to see them punished and pushed into inactivity when they could continue to help the economy.
This tax is the same old fallacy of punishing the industrious while rewarding the indolent, which should not be! At least a few exceptions should be made for those elderly who are still in the mainstream of helping the economy and others. They are younger and more creative than many who are younger in years.
Remember Grandma Moses. GERTRUDE H. SIGMON FERRUM