{"id":278099,"date":"2010-02-04T17:02:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T22:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2010985327_ongoingbudgetwoes.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-02-04T17:02:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T22:02:45","slug":"ongoing-budget-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/278099","title":{"rendered":"Ongoing budget woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Understanding the federal deficit<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article \u201cWhat is the budget deficit and how did it get there?\u201d was sobering to say the least [News, Feb. 2]. I couldn\u2019t help but notice that even if the government completely eradicated all spending other than defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as interest on the debt, we would still run a deficit!<\/p>\n

It brings into sharp focus how irresponsible the Republicans have been to blindly advocate tax cuts without the guts to take on military programs or health-care reform \u2014 though they did offer a \u201cplan\u201d for Social Security: To put it in the stock market \u2026 just before the crash.<\/p>\n

And the sad consequences of modern Republican policies were shown starkly in the chart of annual deficits. Since World War II, deficits were relatively small until exploding during the Reagan years, then brought to zero and finally showing a surplus under Clinton, only to explode again under Bush. Now suddenly the Republicans are all worried about the deficit and blaming Obama? Please, do the math.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Rick Kosterman, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n

Federal budget costly, no incentives for business<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your headline \u201cObama offers a budget of hard choices\u201d really irritates me [page one, Feb. 2]. There is not one hard choice in this absurd budget, except that our struggling country will need to borrow $8.5 trillion over the next 10 years to pay for President Obama\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

When our country desperately needs money for investment to create jobs, he takes it for the government and adds monumental tax increases on businesses and the \u201cinvestor class.\u201d He adds to the number of employees in the federal government by nearly 15 percent \u2014 during his first two years.<\/p>\n

A key indicator of either his feelings about business or his economic ignorance is that he slashes the Commerce Department budget by 12 percent and increases liberal favorites such as the Energy, Education and State departments by an average of 7 percent each.<\/p>\n

There are no hard choices in this budget, but only irresponsibility for the future of this country. Please think of how we are going to pay off this $8.5 trillion. Wouldn\u2019t it have been better to reduce the size and cost of the federal government in these times of need and boost incentives for business?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Theodore M. Wight, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding the federal deficit The article \u201cWhat is the budget deficit and how did it get there?\u201d was sobering to say the least [News, Feb. 2]. I couldn\u2019t help but notice that even if the government completely eradicated all spending other than defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as interest on the debt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}