The Congress has just approved drilling in the Arctic as a part of the national budget. We do need more oil, but largely because the Bush regime has done everything it can to encourage large SUVs and every form of overconsumption. We should never consent to enduring environmental havoc for a 2 percent increase in oil for only 10 years.

This budget is a travesty, calling for a huge and unsustainable deficit, caused by tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, who now pay the smallest tax percentage of gross domestic product that they have paid in the last 60 years. Payroll taxes, however, have risen as a percentage of GDP, while entitlement programs are shrinking as a percentage of GDP.

We need a budget that does not cause a deficit and that does not augment a wealth gap that’s already too high. For this reason, we must repeal the Bush tax cuts. We can give our grandchildren a legacy of a society that works well together, that genuinely cares for each other; or a few can give their grandchildren an extraordinarily large – and empty – monetary legacy. But we cannot give our grandchildren both legacies, as one prevents the other. The decisions we make about this budget are decisions we make about our grandchildren’s world.

Our senators and representatives should support a budget that is fairly balanced.

Social Security is much better than social insecurity.

Jim Wellehan, Auburn

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