Letters for January 22

No right to bare arms

The Missouri House recently altered their dress code to ensure no females would be without their arms covered.

Thank goodness that issue has been settled, but why stop there? Don’t we need a regulated skirt length? Perhaps a burqa would be more suitable?

Until now, I didn’t fully appreciate the hard work my Republican friends in the state House perform, but now I understand. Hats off (?) to you!

Bob Grand, Springfield

Missouri Senior Services robbed to pay for dope enforcement

There must be other financial resources to pay for "rope'a dope'a" enforcement rather than steal from the politically uninformed, old, and helpless people in State of Missouri! Shame! Shame! Shame!

Robert E. Hackley, Republic

Congressman Smith helping out donors, not taxpayers

In a recent “Capitol Report” Jason Smith accuses the “Washington Democrats” of throwing “trillions of taxpayer dollars down the drain to reward the wealthy and score political points with the radical left, all at the expense of working-class Americans.”

I assume he is referring to the Biden administration's “American Rescue Plan.” The Roosevelt Institute describes the ARP as “The most important story — the one that Americans should hear, and progressive policymakers should tell— is that, as a result of our policy choices, our economic system has created millions of jobs, raised wages for those too often left behind, created real economic security for millions of Americans, and increased the power of workers to secure a better deal for themselves and their families.”

Smith was a major player in getting “The Tax Cut and Jobs Act” passed. William G. Gale, of the Brookings Institution wrote on Sept. 25, 2019, in “A Fixable Mistake: The Tax Cut and Jobs Act” that “(t)he bill was so unpopular with the public that Republican members of Congress like Chris Collins and Lindsey Graham resorted to justifying their support by saying that their donors would cut off funding otherwise. ... Almost all the individual income tax provisions — but not the price index change — expire after 2025, while most of the corporate income tax provisions — but not expensing — are permanent. ... When TCJA is eventually financed, the most plausible scenarios suggest that most households — and almost all low- and middle-income households — will end up being worse off than if TCJ had not been enacted.”

Smith misleads his readers on many other topics, e.g. IRS agents and Covid policies. It is apparent that his actions are related to the source of his political donations.

James Vokac, Willow Springs

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Springfield News-Leader Letters to the Editor for January 22, 2023