LETTERS: CLINTON REPRESENTS ALL THE PEOPLE

To the editor:

President Clinton's increasing popularity after six years of Republican hatred, harassment and impeachment has his critics baffled. It's really quite simple. Clinton's policies represent all the people, including the downtrodden, homeless, helpless, minimum wagers and the hopeless left over from 12 years of Reaganism. Clinton gave them hope, and the economy smiles on all Americans.

The only thing this Republican-controlled Congress has done, other than slander Clinton, is cut the capital-gains tax. I dare say 98 percent of these who read this were not benefited a single dollar. And during the Reagan revolution, his tax policies took more than $20 billion from families earning less than $10,000 annually but gave $64 billion to those with annual incomes of over $80,000. Federal funding assistance for low-income people was reduced 53 percent. Subsidized housing was cut 73 percent. Job training and maternal and child health were also slashed. Many lives were devastated. But big corporations under Reagan's revolution received millions in refunds, and we all know what happened to the national debt and deficit spending.

Evangelist Jerry Falwell proclaimed that wealth is how God rewards the faithful. Proverbs 22:16 says, "He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he that giveth to the rich shall surely come to want."

Now a bit about morals in the Republican congressmen. In their obsession to destroy Clinton, their mantle has been shattered. Peering through the cracks, this is what the world sees: While preaching righteousness and family values, they were sneaking around with someone else's wife and their neighbor's daughter. Kids are running loose out there fathered by Republican congressmen outside their own marriages. Some seduced young single girls. They have broken up marriages by having affairs with young men's wives, causing them to divorce their wives. Bob Livingston bedded down with as many women as he could get. Bob and the others sneaked, lied and covered it up. Only when they were caught did they admit it. The Republicans call Bob a hero.

Having failed to get Clinton on anything illegal, they manufactured crime from a non-criminal matter which they are more guilty of than Clinton is. This is unfair, and the people don't like it.

Clinton's toughness and ability to run this country under the most difficult of circumstances, with the Republicans booby-trapping every step of every path he has tread, will cause him to go down in history as one of the great president's of this century along with Roosevelt and Truman.

W.T. WOODS

Bertrand