Dear Friends,

The Majority Party recently released their Fiscal Year 2009 Budget and I fundamentally disagree with many parts of their budget including:

Tax hikes: The budget would raise taxes by $683 billion over five years by claiming automatic, scheduled increases in marginal rates (including the elimination of the 10% bracket); higher taxes on marriage and children; higher taxes on investments, small businesses and estates; and other tax hikes. 

No AMT Fix: The budget does not permanently fix the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a tax that was originally intended to capture the highest income earners to prevent them from using loopholes to pay lower taxes.  Until recently, the AMT affected less than one percent of taxpayers. Since 2000, the AMT has steadily grown, affecting approximately 3 percent of taxpayers in 2005. If left unchanged, the AMT will penalize nearly 20 percent of taxpayers by 2010—some 30 million Americans in total. 

Increased Spending: The budget adds $276 billion to the President’s budget over five years.  Congress should not be increasing the burden of debt on future generations by unjustifiable spending on government programs.  The best action Congress could take would be to decrease spending and keep taxes low.

No Entitlement Reform: Mandatory spending accounts for 61% of the entire federal budget and the largest and fastest growing component of mandatory spending is Medicare and Social Security. The Majority Party’s budget does nothing to address Social Security and Medicare’s unfunded liabilities of about $38.7 trillion.

Speaker Pelosi’s budget fails to address the concerns of the American people who deserve certainty that their taxes will not be raised and confidence that their government is not recklessly spending and leaving the burden to future generations. 

I welcome your input as I understand this is an issue that is important to the constituents of the 44^th Congressional District of California. 

Sincerely,

KEN CALVERT

Member of Congress