Published: June 16, 2009 08:00 am      

Letters for June 16, 2009

Republican voters confused, misguided

Since 1945, the party that claims to support "small government" and "fiscal responsibility" actually spent more money and grew bigger governments than did Democratic presidents. In fact, Republican administrations (excluding Eisenhower) have outspent Democrats and driven up the national debt as a percentage of GDP by a whopping 3-to-1 ratio!

When Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt was $930 billion, and when he left it had mushroomed to nearly $2.9 trillion, turning the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation in just eight short years. Reagan's fiscal strategy was based on cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing military spending while selling treasury bonds to foreign investors to pay the bills.

Following in his mentor's footsteps, George H.W. Bush ran up the national debt by almost $2 trillion, and until his son took office, he held the record for the largest annual budget deficit in U.S. history (more than $500 billion).

In 1993, Clinton inherited a national debt of around $4.5 trillion and a budget deficit of $290 billion. By raising taxes on the wealthy (and cutting them for the middle-class and poor) and reducing military spending, the U.S. debt was cut by $360 billion and was $2.4 trillion less at the end of his presidency than had been projected when Clinton took office.

When George W. Bush took the oath in 2001, he inherited a budget surplus of more than $230 billion with a national debt of around $5.6 trillion, and he immediately cut taxes for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by $630 billion, thus eradicating Clinton's surplus by year's end. Bush also raided Social Security to the tune of $150 billion to make the 2004 deficit appear smaller. By the end of Bush's presidency, the national debt had doubled to more than $10 trillion.

Richard Averett

Otego

Keep government out of health care

To answer Mr. Weeks' question of June 5, yes! There are a lot of us out here who don't believe that government-run health insurance is the solution to our "problem." I agree that this country is in a huge financial mess, but running up a bigger tab would be counter-productive. In case he hasn't noticed, Medicare is already bankrupting this country.

His claim of a $400 billion savings, by eliminating paperwork and waste, seems to be pulled out of thin air, as even the website he directed me to offered no data to back up this assertion. A huge new government bureaucracy would generate at least as much red tape and breed inefficiency. Where are the savings realized?

Mr. Weeks believes that KatarinaCare would eliminate lobbying. When the government debates which treatments must be covered, who will it be hearing from? If he thinks lobbyists are too numerous now, he ain't seen nothin' yet!

The only way to contain dollar costs, under the de facto rationing system that would evolve, is to increase the suffering of real people through longer wait times for scarce resources.

Open the markets, not the public trough. States should liberalize laws and allow out-of-state insurers to offer products to their citizens, making the market more competitive. Tort reform would eliminate "defensive medicine" (unneeded tests and redundant medicines) and lower malpractice insurance rates.

As I can think of nothing my government does well, I most certainly don't want it getting further involved in my health care.

Al Gascon

Bainbridge