McCusker wrong to question retroactive tax cut

James McCusker’s Sept. 15 column in The Herald, “Congress should avoid retroactive tax cuts,” is a poorly reasoned disguise for a tax increase. It’s also sloppy writing. The article begins with a mismatched mess referencing ISIS, and then by magical amalgamation of misstatment and misunderstanding equates “ex post facto” clauses in the U.S. Constitution, to bad government and bad tax policy on the part of Congress.

We’re talking tax break here, Jim! Everyone get’s something! But McCusker rambles on and on and on in his alphabet soup commentary about “unfunded economic stimulus program,” and “Treasury will have to refund money to taxpayers,” as well as “the reduction in interest rates would be enough stimulus” It seems McCusker has his own crypto-agenda regarding taxes, while clothing Congressional efforts in illegality and misrepresentation.

All this aside, it is more than odd, that McCusker fails to mention the multiple times Congress has raised taxes and then made those raises retroactive in one instance, retroactive by nearly ten years! The courts have largely agreed that government has the power to do this (United States v. Carlton). So Jim, why the whining about a tax break for all just because it reaches a few months into the past?

Timothy J. Heath

Everett