Orrin Hatch: The wealthy are being unfairly abused

IF YOU'VE ever been t0 Utah, you would agree that it offers the visitor some dazzling sights like the other-worldly Bryce Canyon. But, alas, it continues to offer us a 77-year-old stiff-collared Republican senator named Orrin Hatch who carefully chooses his words with tweezers. He's also a conservative's conservative who never met a billionaire that he didn't like (Nor a TV camera, but that's another story). His latest foray into the twilight zone of taxes asserts that the upper 1 percent of wealthy taxpayers are getting screwed by paying 38 pct. of the total federal income tax. On the other hand, he believes that the poor ought to pay more to help us balance the budget. In his view, expressed on the Senate floor, the poor and middle class get a generous benefit from Social Security while ''the top 1 percent of the so-called wealthy pay 38 pct of the income tax."

So-called???? Until now, I and a lot of other folks had figured millionaires and billionaires to be unequivocally wealthy without wondering why anybody would decide to qualify it.

Correct me, but the reason the high rollers pay a larger volume of the total is that they make more money than people standing in line for employment today. But it's easy to dismiss the fellow for standing up for his crowd. He's been wrong before. None other than Justice Clarence Thomas has noted that it was Hatch who was responsible for his appointment to the bench.