I respectfully disagree with Robert Wassman’s Sept. 5 letter, “Democrats are not helping.” As columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. pointed out in “Why do red states lag economically?” since 1961, nearly twice as many jobs have been created under the policies of Democratic presidents as were created by the policies of Republican presidents. In the last quarter century, only one president cleaned up our deficit and left us a financial surplus: a Democrat, who, yes, raised taxes on corporations. In the same time span, only one president spun our nation into an all-out recession: a Republican who reversed those very policies.
Opposing all taxes is too simplistic; it’s repeatedly made matters worse. If the Republican Party is “the real party of the working man,” why doesn’t it support raising the minimum wage? President Barack Obama has promoted a national increase of the minimum wage, but Republicans refused to act, so 13 states raised it on their own. Department of Labor records show that those states have since added jobs at a faster rate than the rest; more people at the working level spending more money boosts the local economy, creating a need for more workers. Red states have fewer benefits, less security and a lower per capita income, requiring more people to use our national support programs, such as food stamps, than blue states.
Roy G. Wilson
Vancouver
