Stimulus Is Fraud
To The Editor:

The stimulus package is a fraud against the middle class who continues to suffer tax increases through the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The AMT removes deductions, resulting in punitive taxation on those who work the hardest.

It is a fabrication by the [Bush] Administration that it has championed lower income taxes. In reality, the wealthy have been rewarded while thousands of additional households are forced to pay ever higher taxes. The AMT results in the middle class paying nearly 35 percent in income taxes from earned income while the wealthy, who rely upon investment incomes to sustain their life styles, pay Uncle Sam 15 percent.

Democrat and Republican claims of protecting the middle class are bogus. During the Clinton Administration, the AMT continued to gobble up more and more families, inflicting economic hardships. None of the presidential candidates are seriously considering ending the AMT.

The Republican-controlled Congress spent like drunken sailors. The hyperbole of being fiscally conservative is campaign fodder revealed by deficit spending and a ballooning national debt.

Issuing checks to avoid a recession does nothing for those who fall under the AMT. They will still be bludgeoned by a tax rate everyone else in the economy avoids. The middle class remains the whipping child of politicians addicted to this backdoor funding of government. Terminating the AMT would return to the economy far more than the $150 billion being ballyhooed in Washington. Edward Horn Baldwin, New York