From Paul W. Voegeli

Monroe

To the editor:

A recent ad in The Times that was paid for by the Green County Democratic Party stated: “The new $300/month child tax credit. One more reason to support Democrats.” I have several reactions to that statement.

First of all, the child tax credit is not new at all. It has been in the Internal Revenue Code for years. What is new is an immense expansion of the credit, all at incredible expense to taxpayers. That expansion includes: (a) increasing the credit from $200 to $300 per child per month, (b) eliminating income requirements for obtaining the credit, and (c) at tremendous expense paying the credit in monthly installments rather than in a single yearly check. Obviously, increased costs to the Federal government (otherwise known as Big Brother) are of no concern to those who sponsored that ad in The Times.

There is an old saying that Federal giveaway programs should be for the needy, not the greedy. Until now, that was the purpose of the child tax credit, and nearly everyone approved of it being used for that purpose. Those in Washington who are now in charge of Big Brother obviously believe that the primary purpose of government programs is not to help the needy but rather to induce people to vote for them out of gratitude for receiving a gift from Big Brother. These are the same people who continued the enhanced unemployment benefits all summer even though employers throughout the country (including many in Monroe) were begging for workers. They are also the same people who want to ram through a $3.5 trillion budget-busting inflationary boondoggle that would be the biggest government spending program in world history.

A very wise man named Ronald Reagan once said that the scariest nine words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The present fiasco at our Southern border, the disastrous debacle in Afghanistan and the insatiable desire of the present administration to spend, spend, spend, in an attempt to buy votes, show that President Reagan was right. That is not surprising when the person who is supposedly in charge of one branch of Big Brother is 78-year-old sleepy Joey Biden.