The debate in Congress over raising the debt ceiling makes me wonder how Republicans can still support the party that wants to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Republican politicians have totally lost touch with ordinary people. They say that big corporations should have special loopholes, subsidies and low taxes because they create jobs, but they have already had fantastic tax deals since President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Where are all the jobs they have supposedly created?

Fourteen million people can’t find work and companies are refusing to hire the unemployed. The U.S. has more than 600,000 homeless people while, according to the IRS, from 1992 to 2007, the 400 highest-income taxpayers have had their incomes go up by an average of 392 percent while their taxes went down 37 percent.

The deficit was run up mostly during President Bush’s two terms, with two incredibly expensive wars, tax breaks for the rich and the Wall Street bailout. Now Republicans want to lower the deficit by hurting the middle class, seniors and the most vulnerable people in America.

Why don’t the rich and big corporations have to pay their fair share of taxes, the way they have done in the past?

Ellen Field, New Gloucester