Make credit card interest deductible again

To the editor:

Can this president or Congress do anything right?

When Congress gave banks and credit card companies several months advance notice of restrictive legislation, all of my credit card companies have doubled or tripled their interest rate charges. They have also drastically cut our credit limits by as much as 75 percent.

My wife and I (both seniors) have never bounced a check, never made a late payment and have a credit rating of more than 800. I can imagine what they have done to folks with lesser credentials.

So now they are giving the insurance companies advance notice that legislation is imminent that will restrict their rates and coverage. My medical insurance premium just shot up by 13 percent in anticipation of this legislation.

It has been proved that TARP and the stimulus boondoggle were total failures, so now we have the "jobs bill."

If our leaders really wanted to ease the pain for citizens, they would rescind the Reagan-era legislation that removed the deductibility of credit card and auto interest payments. This would be a boost to the economy far beyond the effects of any "stimulus" package.

Joe Licari

Las Vegas

Welfare handouts

To the editor:

In response to Patrick J. Buchanan's Feb. 21 column, "Is this how democracy ends?"

I thought I had missed something. The article refers to "big entitlements" Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nowhere did I see mentioned the greatest, most expensive entitlement rip-off of taxpayers: welfare. Many recipients have never contributed to society in any sense, yet we taxpayers act as enablers of all types of behavior by continuing to support their irresponsible behavior.

As a registered nurse for 35 years, I saw many examples of this abuse of people who believe in personal responsibility. It is time we stopped expecting nothing for something, and expect some type of return for our "investment."

Dorothy Henry

Henderson