This claim is incorrect. The House plan does not include a tax increase. It simply assumes the same level of revenues over the 2007-2012 period as projected by the Congressional Budget Office under its current policy baseline, which essentially assumes no change in current laws governing taxes.

Under current law, the Bush administration's tax cuts, including the child tax credit and relief from the marriage penalty, are slated to expire by the end of 2010.

However, Congress is free under the House budget plan to extend any or all of the tax cuts - as well as relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax - if it fully pays for these extensions through either changes in other taxes or changes in entitlement programs.

In fact, Section 401 of the resolution specifically supports the extension of the child tax credit and marriage penalty relief and the elimination of estate taxes on all except the very largest estates.

It should be recalled that the administration's tax cuts expire in 2010 because their supporters deliberately designed them that way, in order to fit the tax cuts within the cost constraints imposed by the congressional budget resolutions adopted in 2001 and 2003.

To extend the tax cuts without paying for them - and to attack those who simply seek to require that any extension of the tax cuts be paid for - would compound the fiscal irresponsibility of the original gimmick.

TRUDI RENWICK, Ph.D.

Saratoga Springs