Letters:

I read with great interest Daniel J. Mitchell's commentary on how he would balance the budget ("Tax hikes not needed to balance the budget," Wednesday).

Using as his goal a reduction of the budget by $1.35 trillion, Mitchell offered several programs that he would wish to eliminate: The Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Transportation, and the Small Business Administration, National Endowment of the Arts, and energy-subsidy programs. Upon gathering the budget figures, I found those programs amount to $338 billion. Since it was difficult to determine the amount of energy-subsidy programs in the budget, I replaced it with the entire Department of Energy numbers.

Unless my math is totally off, that still leaves $1 trillion in the deficit to eliminate.

Mitchell also proposed capping spending at the current level with a hard freeze as an alternative to the above cuts. I presume he means Social Security, also. That just might be a problem for people who depend on Social Security to live.

Diane Strano

Secane

didipa3@comcast.net

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reached a new low - even for him. His suggestion that the U.S. government aided in the 9/11 attacks is an insult to every American. He is completely out of control ("U.S. walks out of Iran's speech," Friday).

The thought that his country, Iran, is in the process of producing nuclear arms should frighten every one of us far more than it appears to. We need to increase sanctions while keeping other options open if sanctions do not work.

Karen Eble

Huntingdon Valley

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A recent letter to the editor likened health-care reform to the dangerous dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao ("Health-care reform threatens liberty," Thursday). Unfortunately this sort of ill-informed, factually inaccurate propaganda continues to be spread to the detriment of all Americans.

What the health-care law will do is: stop insurance companies from dropping people when they become ill; close the Medicare doughnut hole; allow children to remain on their parents' plans until they are 26 years old; prohibit lifetime caps on coverage; and prevent children from being denied coverage because of a preexisting condition.

The health-care law will improve the lives of all Americans and will help strengthen our democracy - not diminish it.

Jill C. Zipin

Horsham

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It was terribly sad to read Trudy Rubin's column "Heart of the process" on Thursday, in which she places virtually all responsibility and guilt on Benjamin Netanyahu's head to obtain a peace process.

Nowhere does Rubin note that Israel is again expected to give again and again, when the track record of all her "giving" (of both Sinai and Gaza) in the past has led only to more terror and killing, but no peace.

Nowhere does Rubin even intimate - much less demand - that the Arabs recognize Israel as a sovereign Jewish state, with recognized and peaceful borders; that Israel has a just, and fair, claim to the territory in question; that the Arabs must show they have truly peaceful intentions by stopping all incitement to hate (in their schools, media, books, and even summer camps); and instead, actually teach, and preach, peaceful intent to the Arab citizens.

Herb Zigerman

Philadelphia

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Re: "Gubernatorial candidates on the school-voucher bus," Sept. 15:

Tom Corbett has supported school vouchers from day one, which would provide children the opportunity to leave a failing public school to attend better public or even private schools.

Corbett is completely right to call his opponent, Dan Onorato, a "flip-flopper" on the issue of school vouchers and school choice. Onorato claims that he supported vouchers as a Pittsburgh city councilman by voting for a nonbinding resolution in support of a voucher program. The problem is that a nonbinding resolution does nothing and has no teeth.

Pennsylvania needs a governor who will make tough decisions and stand by those decisions. While Onorato wavers with the wind, Corbett takes a stance and sticks to it. He is someone Pennsylvania can believe in.

Steven C. Boc

Philadelphia

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As a Jew, a Zionist, and a resident of the 7th District, I must confess that I am a bit befuddled at the prevailing narrative surrounding my congressman, retired Adm. Joe Sestak. The Emergency Committee for Israel, a Swiftboat-esque group, is running ads against Sestak in his race against Rep. Pat Toomey for U.S. Senate. These ads would have the voters of Pennsylvania believe that Toomey is a better friend to Israel than Sestak, that Sestak does not see Israel as a pivotal ally in the Middle East, and (most ridiculously) that Sestak is a terrorist sympathizer. Not one of those assertions is based in fact.

Sestak has been a perpetual friend to the state of Israel, a record that Toomey cannot boast. Israel relies heavily on American military aid. Sestak has voted in favor of this aid at every opportunity as a congressman; as congressman, Toomey did not.

Seth Kennedy

Haverford