The “View” written by Chaz Holmes, “Tax criticism of Obama unfair” in the Jan. 5 issue of The Courier-Herald caught my attention. He states that under Obama’s presidency taxes have gone down. My taxes have been going up each year since 2005. My retirement income has been diminishing over that same period. My own experience defeats his argument.

I consider myself a Jeffersonian Democrat. Yes, that is a rare set of folks today. Consequently, I was hurt by his attack on Tea Party members calling them, “…an embarrassing blight on our country…” The Tea Party seems to be fighting the “Progressive Degeneration” of recent times. They are trying to re-set this nation to where it should be, the peak where the founding fathers had taken us.

The article forced me to do some research. It seems Chaz ignored some facts such as retirement incomes dropping dramatically, unemployment increasing and poverty rising to 14 percent in 2009. Here is a key fact I found at the Tax Policy Center: A huge number of Americans are no longer paying taxes at all, a shockingly high 43 percent. The rest of us are carrying them.

When it comes to the enormous national debt, little was said about the fact that money we borrow today will have to be paid back in the future with taxes.

Robert Gaylord

Lake Tapps