Change in tax code essential to recovery

This letter is in response to Donald Froelich’s letter suggesting that multimillionaire Warren Buffett should put his money where his mouth is by going ahead and donating more money to the federal government. The problem with Mr. Foelich’s suggestion is that it misses the whole point of Buffet’s assertion, and does nothing to solve our economic calamity. That’s because without real changes to our tax code, rich conservatives like yourself and your millionaire/billionaire friends will refuse to do the right thing on a voluntary basis.

Mr. Froelich apparently is drinking the Republican Kool-Aid believing it is fair that American working class tax rates should be higher than for millionaires and billionaires. Where is Mr. Froelich’s sense of fairness? While working men and women are struggling to put peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the table, millionaires/billionaires are eating lobster and caviar and drinking champagne. Millionaires went to billionaires since the Bush 2001 tax cuts. While the billionaires were slurping up those tax cuts they were shipping jobs overseas by the hundreds of thousands.

Mr. Froelich, if you and your conservative friends don’t understand that good-paying jobs are the engines that drive our economy, I might suggest a good economics class or look at history. The most prosperous economy we’ve had in recent times was during the Clinton administration. In 1993 the first thing he did was raise taxes. Everyone prospered and Bill Clinton left office with a huge surplus in our U.S. Treasury only to be eaten up by George Bush.

Does anyone really believe oil and gas companies need tax subsidies and that it’s fair General Electric didn’t pay a dime of federal taxes in 2010? President Obama is spot on by proposing a change in our tax codes so millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.

Roger N. Nauyalis

Mount Prospect