Last week’s candidate forum underscored how the parties differ on the pivotal theme of this year’s election: when times are hard and the people and the government are scrambling for the last dollar, who should get that dollar: the people or the government?

The self-proclaimed party of the people consistently said, the government. They support an income tax and the Reporter quotes Rep. Springer admitting that maintaining the state tax bite is more important than my family being overtaxed (read: overcharged). I wish I could run my family budget that way, but our families and businesses have to reduce spending to match declining revenue. If I overcharged a customer and refused to refund because “I need the money,” I’d be accused of price-gouging and theft, and rightly be fired and jailed.

Will the I-1098 state income tax expand beyond the promised “only a few percent on only the top earners?” They said the same thing about the federal income tax many decades ago.

Two of the incumbents also showed a breathtaking denial of reality if not an overt hostility towards alternative education when Rep. Goodman said private schools are “way overfunded, we’d have to raise taxes 50 percent to match” private school funding, and as the Reporter quoted Rep. Springer “… cost per student is way higher in private schools and not even close.” I scrimp and save to send my children to Providence Classical Christian School, and our total funding from all sources is under $8,000 per student per year, at least 20 percent less than public school spending, with zero accepted from the taxpayers, and we’ve cultivated two national merit scholar finalists from almost every (small) graduating class we’ve had. And our students learn fiscal restraint and resourcefulness! More to the point: what gives these “representatives” the authority to say we are overfunded? They have no right to decide or even opine on what is “too much” for a private entity to raise or to limit the education we offer the children of our community. Andy Hill and Mark Isaacs, but none of the Democrats, acknowledged the host church’s compassion work; at least the Democrats didn’t accuse the church of being way overfunded.

K-Y Su, Kirkland