The choice to enact the largest tax cut in Maine history is a reverse Robin Hood.

It greatly and unfairly benefits the highest-income people at the expense of the neediest, and dramatically increases the state’s financial deficit. No business in our situation would purposely reduce its income.

The governor was quoted in the newspaper as saying, “There is no free lunch,” but he should have added, “unless your income is high enough.”

If the governor and Legislature choose to eliminate thousands of people from state subsidies for health insurance, it will affect all of us.

This action is both unfair and will hurt the economy. It will force people to use emergency rooms, which must treat them. They will be unable to pay, but we cannot let the hospitals go bankrupt. So the 20 percent that is built into the cost of everyone’s insurance premiums to pay for the uninsured will increase, forcing more families to be priced out of health insurance.

This will further increase the problem of the uninsured while leaving less money to be improve our consumer-based economy.

Mainers get through hardship by working together. If a natural disaster occurs, citizens quickly volunteer to provide the needed assistance. If the governor and Legislature were to eliminate the new tax breaks for high income people and large corporations, then all the people of Maine could share the responsibility of working together to defeat an economic disaster.

John Reinsborough

Readfield