Term limits would lead to lower taxes

The state of Illinois now has the solution to all of Illinois' financial problems in addition to adding piles of new money for education. It will come from an additional 3 percent surcharge on the income of the "rich." Pat Quinn says he wants to increase taxes "only" on the "rich" and earmark those extra funds for education. Is that the same "earmark" that sent all the profits from the lottery directly to education?

Every time they raise taxes it is always for "education" or the "poor and disabled." If that were true we wouldn't have any poor and we'd have schools with gold-plated floors and only Harvard graduates teaching in our inner-city schools. The money wasted on government assistance programs could make millionaires out of every man, women and child in America.

Pat Quinn is also keeping the 1.5 percent increase in the income tax (now at 5 percent on every taxpayer) in place but is "giving us" a guaranteed $500-a-year tax credit. I am a senior on a fixed income. Yet in the last two years my property taxes have gone up $800 at a time when the value of my home went down. Pat Quinn's $500 tax credit won't even cover the continual increases I keep getting in my local property taxes. His proposal does not offer any freeze on increasing local property taxes.

This is not the solution. If you give the government more money, they promise to find a million ways to waste it. The first thing to fix the problem is limits of two terms for all elected officials. If it's good enough for the president it is good enough for all elected offices.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. End the insanity.

Annette Swoger

Streamwood