Letter: Republicans and Democrats are both committed to redistributing wealth.

The Romney campaign, attempting to turn Mitt Romney's 47-percent lemon into lemonade, has gone on the attack, accusing President Barack Obama of seeking to "redistribute" wealth, a code word among conservatives for socialism. But let's not be fooled by cheap political rhetoric. Republicans, too, are committed to redistributing wealth.

Republicans support government as it takes money from the wealthy and gives it in a variety of ways to the less fortunate — through Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, veterans' programs, food stamps and many other government redistribution programs. Yes, they would prefer to shrink these programs some, but they would never eliminate them.

The problem is that Republicans are lukewarm about redistribution. They can't abide the notion of increasing taxes on the wealthy, so instead they insist that we pay for all the "entitlements" they support with debt instead of with tax revenue. But this is a sort of redistribution, too. It redistributes wealth from our children to pay for our needs today.

Roger Terry

Orem