11/14 Letters: Rep. George Holding ‘out of touch’ with constituents on tax bill

Regarding “Holding ‘thrilled’ to work on tax bill” (Nov 7): Rep. George Holding showed once again that he is completely out of touch with his constituents’ needs. Holding claims that the GOP tax bill will support the “aspirational nature” of our country. However, the tax bill will cap the mortgage deduction, which will discourage home ownership.

The bill also removes the student loan interest deduction and makes graduate student tuition waivers taxable, making people less likely to invest in their future by going to college and getting advanced degrees. Holding seems most enthusiastic about the repeal of the estate tax and even laments the fact that the estate tax was in place when his father died. The estate tax repeal would benefit millionaires like him but would have little to no effect on the vast majority of his constituents or their aspirations for pursuing the American dream of a successful career and home ownership.

If Holding wants to cultivate the “aspirational nature” of his constituents, he will invest in middle-class tax benefits rather than giving handouts to the top 1 percent.

Honor veterans

Veterans Day 2018 will come, and once again we will honor our veterans. But let us really honor them.

America needs to resolve that it will try earnestly to resolve differences with others without resorting to military conflict. When we fall into the pit of armed conflict, then we as a country and we as human beings have failed.

Hope for research

“RTI International to lead study on the benefits and risks of opioids” (Nov. 10) really hit home for me. I’m currently in my mid-20s, and of my group of close high school friends, only one is still alive and free. The rest have either died from an overdose or are currently serving a drug-related sentence.

I, too, found myself horribly addicted. At first, we largely depended on raiding medicine cabinets; nearly all of our parents had a cabinet full of opioids. Eventually, we moved to smoking heroin, which then led to injecting. It took nearly dying from an overdose and an overwhelming amount of family support and counseling for me to break free from dependency on opioids. Still, I can’t deny that there are many more people out there experiencing unbearable pain, so it pleases me to see such studies are being done to help provide an academic framework going forward.

This type of endeavor will prove invaluable when our lawmakers finally get serious about this issue and try to find a healthy balance between handing opioids out like candy and responsibly prescribing them to treat legitimate suffering. All I know? Countless lives are on the line.

This story was originally published November 13, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "11/14 Letters: Rep. George Holding ‘out of touch’ with constituents on tax bill."