As a Bath resident and Maine taxpayer, I oppose L.D. 1781, which will extend for another 20 years a $60,000,000 tax giveaway to General Dynamics, one of the largest defense contractors in the world, whose taxpayer funded profits have been so great that they are buying back their own stock.

General Dynamics does not need our hard-earned money; Maine and her taxpayers do. I urge the Taxation Committee, which is already questioning the value of tax breaks and Pine Tree Zones, to vote no. Recent analyses prepared for the state Department of Economic and Community Development question whether this giveaway is even working as intended. Why would we continue?

I urge all those who opposed the recent federal tax bill, all those who abhor the waste and fraud in the federal budget, all those who seek relief on behalf of elderly and limited-income property owners, and all those who have a common sense understanding of workforce and economic development, to join me in opposing this ill-conceived scheme.

As former President and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower warned us in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Stop this robbery now.

Leslie Manning

Bath

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