Eliminate partisan politics, national debt

Staff Writer
The Independent

A firm believer in being an informed voter before casting my ballot for president, I offer the following considerations. Politics schmolitics; somebody — please! — have the audacity to completely eliminate partisan politics and fix this country right now.

The national debt: If you believe either candidate can balance the budget and stop the ever increasing rise in our national debt given the way our Congress operates now, you also believe reindeer really know how to fly. Interest on the national debt, Medicare, Social Security, and defense spending take up so much of our budget that there cannot possibly be much significant wiggle room unless we do something drastic. How about this: Place a one-time

15-percent surtax on anyone’s individual net worth that ranks in the top 5 percent. Use that money to pay off the national debt. If you are worth say, a billion dollars, are you really that much worse off if you end up being worth only

$850 million? Heck, if the stock market continues to grow the way it has since Barack Obama has been President, it looks like you’d get back all your surtax money via net worth appreciation in a year or so. Talk about heroics; we could pin you with a hero for life button.

And this: Get rid of all this health care gobbledygook and put the entire country on Medicare. Charge an extra premium for smokers and those who, through their own fault, are obese. Give an annual rebate to those whose actual annual medical care expense is less than the cost to cover them. Here’s some more: To give proper respect to the “you DID build that” entrepreneurs, eliminate any and all tax breaks communities give to businesses that are looking for a place to build a factory or whatever. Look, a tax break is government assistance and, given that, can you honestly say you did build that? You’d get the same hero button.

Tom Murray,

Alexandria, Ohio