The Issue: Taxpayer unhappiness at the expansion of government aid programs over the last 50 years.
***
For once, I agree with Bill O’Reilly 100 percent (“The Folks Who Want What You Have,” PostOpinion, July 27).
His statistic that 35 percent of Americans receive welfare blows my mind. I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea.
In addition to the nanny state, we have politicians (especially Democrats) buying votes. When you add the welfare recipients to those voters, it’s easy to understand how President Obama is neck and neck with Mitt Romney in the polls.
What we need is a constitutional amendment that states that if you are not paying taxes, you can’t vote, something like “No representation without taxation.”
Charles Honadel
Staten Island
***
I don’t own a business, but I worked hard in nursing school and continued to work hard for the next 40 years.
I’ve supported myself and my family through my own efforts — I did not receive one bit of assistance from any government entity.
Most Americans have experiences similar to mine, because we share the value of working, not depending on others.
Diane McVey
Scotch Plains, NJ
***
Sure, they “want what you have.” Unfortunately, too many are unwilling to work for it like the rest of us.
I’m getting very tired of paying for the lazy, the corrupt, the wasteful, the illegal and the foolish.
Many hardworking taxpayers making many sacrifices resent being constantly insulted and told by this administration that we do not do enough or are not compassionate or patriotic if we don’t fork over more of our hard-earned money to pay for people abusing the taxpayer.
Seeing Obama and Vice President Joe Biden dine on expensive meals, with $400 bottles of wine by the case, and take million-dollar vacations on taxpayers’ backs sticks in our craw.
And to see billions of our hard-earned dollars used so cavalierly by this administration is galling and heartbreaking.
The entire system and this administration need to be cleaned out.
D.M. Diana
Greeley, Pa.
***
A married couple in this part of the country doesn’t live like millionaires or billionaires.
Supporting a couple of kids, saving for college, trying to fund a retirement while paying outrageous state income and property taxes and dealing with high housing costs can make the lifestyle fairly lean for such folks.
Obama should be honest regarding his tax-reform initiatives and share-the-wealth welfare model.
He is proposing to further tax the upper-middle class, not millionaires and billionaires.
He should have mastered basic math.
Kenneth Lee
Middletown, NJ