Dear Editor, 
Despite Democrats’ compromise offer to extend Bush-era tax cuts for folks earning up to a million dollars, some of our law makers continue holding middle-income wage earners hostage to maintaining tax breaks for our wealthiest citizens. 
Denying middle- and lower-income workers tax relief to wring extended tax breaks for extremely wealthy folks is an inexcusable attack on our middle class, whose real buying power has severely declined over the past decades, especially inexcusable during times when our wealthiest and most privileged have become increasingly wealthier largely because of tax loopholes written to disproportionately benefit them.
This tax debate takes place while Republican law makers insist on denying continued unemployment benefits for laid off workers unless they are offset by reductions elsewhere in the federal budget. 
Those law makers, supposedly terrified by our huge national debt, should propose how they (actually we middle-class earners) will pay for tax cuts to multi-millionaires and billionaires in this era of unsustainable annual budget deficits. 
Let’s face it, tax cuts for our wealthiest do not trickle down to the middle class; that experiment failed these past 20 years. 
The only thing trickling down to the middle class is further unemployment, higher national debt, disproportionate taxation and reduced employee health benefits. 
If Republicans and their few Democrat supporters feel so strongly about extending tax cuts for the wealthiest, they can try next year when they will control the House. 
In short, law makers should accept reasonable compromise and get back to working for our middle class before higher tax rates automatically return this January. 
Felix Revello,
Larned