While I am convinced that Bill Orton is cut from the same cloth as Bill Clinton, both in political philosophy and in method of operation, I never thought I would hear Orton so completely parrot Clinton's line (or is that lie) about the Republican plan to balance the budget. I'm sure that you've heard the line many times by now from Bill Clinton: "The Republicans are going to starve the kids, hurt the elderly and steal from the poor to give a tax break to the rich."
On Friday, Nov. 3, I attended a town meeting with Bill Orton where I heard this divisive and untrue rhetoric yet again. First, Orton went down a list of federal social programs, stating how much was going to be cut from each program. Never once did he mention the fact that each of these programs is actually going to get an increasing amount of money under the Republican plan; the increase just isn't going to be as much as it would under the current schedule. So there really is no cut, and for Orton not to draw that distinction is dishonest.Next, he said that the majority of the tax cut is going to the rich. Again this distortion masks the nature of the tax cut. The bulk of the tax cut comes in the form of a $500 per child tax credit. That means if you have three kids, you cut $1,500 from your income tax bill. For a family earning less than $30,000, this could mean up to a 100 percent income tax cut. For families in the $30,000 to $60,000 income range, the cut still remains significant. But once a family's income is above $100,000, the impact of the cut drops to less than 10 percent. In fact, in the Senate version of the plan, families above $100,000 aren't even eligible for the cut.
Brad Daw
Orem