My Letter to Congress: H.R.1124 Fairness in Taxation Act of 2011 
Contact Congress
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Rep. Billy Long [R, MO-7] Vote on Passage of H.R.1124: Not Voted Yet -
Sen. Roy Blunt [R, MO] Vote on Passage of H.R.1124: Not Voted Yet -
Sen. Claire McCaskill [D, MO] Vote on Passage of H.R.1124: Not Voted Yet
Sincerely,
Robert Penny
your comments. I want to ensure your correspondence receives a
substantive reply to your inquiry. Each day, I receive hundreds of
letters, emails, and phone calls, and while it may take some time for me
to respond, I want to assure you that you will receive a reply which
accurately answers your email. I sincerely appreciate your patience and
I will respond as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
Billy Long
Member of Congress
Dear Mr. Penny,
Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 1124, the Fairness in
Taxation Act; I appreciate having the benefit of your views.
As you may know, the Fairness in Taxation Act creates new tax brackets
separating millionaires and billionaires in to five new groups. These
new brackets would see tax rates of 45% on individuals making between
$1-10 million and rising 1% per bracket up to 49% for anyone making
over $1 billion ever year.
During the ongoing debate about the budget many have suggested that tax
increases need to be a part of any eventual solution to our deficit
problem. I firmly reject this notion. The problems of our nation are
not because citizens are taxed too little, but because politicians
spend too much. Deficits are always a spending problem, not a tax
problem. I reject the notion that the Bush tax cuts, or any other tax
cuts, are responsible for deficits. This would mean that all money
belongs to the government and it merely allows us to keep some of it.
In fact the opposite is true; all wealth belongs to the American people
and they have agreed to give a portion of it to the government for
limited purposes. The government has mismanaged those funds and
deficits are the grim result.
Again, thank you for contacting me on this important issue. Hearing
the views of all Missourians gives me the opportunity to better
understand how important issues could impact the people of the Seventh
District and the future interests of the nation.
For additional information regarding current legislation and my
representation of the Seventh District, I invite you to visit my
website at http://www.long.house.gov
if you would like to receive my monthly newsletter
well.
Sincerely,
Billy Long
Member of Congress
Note to Congressional staff & elected officials reading this: this letter was sent through Contact-Congress features on OpenCongress.org, a free public resource website, but in the future we seek to compel the U.S. Congress to adopt fully open technology for constituent communications. For more information how your office can better handle public feedback through an open API and open standards, contact us -- even today, there are significantly more efficient and responsive ways for our elected officials to receive email feedback than the status quo of individual webforms. For greater public accountability in government, we must make the process of writing one's members of Congress more accessible and empowering. Looking ahead, we will release more data from Contact-Congress letters and Congressional response rates back into the public commons. This will result in a new open data source on bills & issues people care about, as well as encourage best practices in constituent communications and make it possible to grade members of Congress on their responsiveness & citizen satisfaction.
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