The Issue: Congress’ approval of a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, while delaying votes on key issues.
***
The Post’s editorial correctly depicted a president who is not representing the ethos of the American people, but one driven by his personal beliefs (“An Ugly Deal,” Editorial, Jan. 2).
We have a legacy of pulling together during difficult times in order to obtain a greater good. To achieve this, we need a president who leads. Creating class warfare is not the answer.
His failure to lead has caused the Senate and the House to act like a bunch of confused people during a fire drill. The American people were underserved.
One cannot help but think of former President Lyndon Johnson, who must be turning in his grave watching this fiasco.
Phil Serpico
Queens
We are regaled by the press that the fiscal cliff was avoided, but it takes digging to find that the major budget issues were kicked down the road.
It is also reported that for every one dollar of new taxes, there are $41 of new spending. Just try to balance a budget when you get a $1 pay raise and decide to spend $41 more.
Those who like that the 1 percent will be taxed more can look at their paychecks and see that they are taking home less this year than last, as the tax holiday for their part of Social Security is reverting to the original rate.
So much for the president saying his plans are balanced and nobody making under $200,000 per year would have tax increases.
Barry Levy
Hawthorne, Calif.
I find it absolutely disheartening that the elected officials we send to Washington continue to drag us deeper into a fiscal mess.
It is incomprehensible and irresponsible that those same elected officials would get us $16 trillion in debt, create no budget and continue to increase our debt trillions of dollars more than what we already have.
I can’t understand why elected officials on local and state levels have to balance their budgets but the federal government doesn’t. When you write the law, you can do what you want.
It is a shame that they can’t be forced to live within a 2 percent cap. I truly feel sorry for our younger generation, which will pay the price for this careless spending spree for many years to come.
George Coppola
Whippany, NJ
That was some New Year’s hangover: We cut taxes by raising them and reduced the deficit by increasing it.
I’m 63, and I’ve never been that drunk. Give me a glass of that congressional punch. Or was it Kool-Aid?
Stan Kabrt
Hopatcong, NJ
Congratulations, America! Our do-nothing Congress and class-warrior president have finally agreed on new tax rates for the wealthy.
Without regard for our $16 trillion national debt, five consecutive years of annual spending that exceeds revenues by more than a trillion dollars and near 8 percent unemployment, Washington marred the holiday season with a discussion of who should pay higher taxes.
So we begin 2013 with no solutions or any discussion of the country’s most pressing problems, confiscation of more income of successful individuals, fiscal-cliff legislation that adds $4 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years and our president continuing his holiday in Hawaii. Go figure.
Mike Ferreer
Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
The deal between the Senate, the president and House Speaker John Boehner did little more than avoid hard choices by kicking the can down the road.
Absent huge cuts in spending and significant restrictions in “entitlements” — a symbolically horrible word that in many cases should be replaced by “handouts” — we will be finished as a great nation.
It is simple common sense that any entity that continually spends beyond its means will fail sooner or later.
I am almost 60, and to do my part in helping to solve this national fiscal nightmare, I’m willing to have my Social Security retirement age raised to 70, and to forgo any mortgage deductions.
Who else would like to help out by foregoing an “entitlement” or “benefit?”
Edward Hochman
Manhattan