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Show Sen. Hatch hits tax system in Digest article Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) scores the federal tax system as impeding job creation and productivity while inflation in-flation thrusts Americans into higher and higher tax brackets. In an article titled "Inflation, Taxes, the Budget, and You," appearing in the July Reader's Digest, Hatch writes: "The bottom line of these tax policies can be found in my state of Utah, where 5500 jobs at a U.S. Steel facility are in jeopardy. The short-term problem centers on demands by the Environmental En-vironmental Protection Agency for the installation of advanced anti-pollution devices, which U.S. Steel says it cannot afford. If federal tax laws encouraged capital investment, those environmental en-vironmental hurdles would not be insurmountable, in-surmountable, a plant could be modernized, and American steel would become more competitive on world markets." Additionally, the senator reports that Congress can continue to authorize the spending of huge government funds because inflation pushes American citizens into progressively higher tax brackets. "In little more than a decade," he writes, "the proportion of American wage-earners in the 25-percent-or-higher tax bracket has grown from less than one in 11 Americans to nearly one in three. Working people the American middle class are being taxed at a rate once designed for the rich. The result is that the tederal treasure enjoys the benefits of a built-in tax increase each year." Hatch proposes an immediate $20-billion $20-billion reduction in non-defense spending and a comparable cut in federal taxes. Since this is an election year, he suggests a grass roots campaign cam-paign supporting such a proposal has a . better-than-usual chance of being favorably heard in Congress. |