Dear editor:
In Wednesday, December 23, your editorial opinion attempted to suggest that raising the debt ceiling by $290 billion before the end of the first part of the 111st Congress on New Year's Eve is "hiding the truth". While your editorial did hit all the right-wing 'conservative' talking points, it is disingenuous to imply that 'liberals' (a word you used three times in your piece in an unflattering manner) are attempting to raise the debt ceiling without necessity and impulsively.
A responsible editor would remind its readers of the underlying reasons of the current deficits and national debt of $12 trillion (unless one would subscribe to the beliefs of the 2009 'Conservative of the Year' Award winner, former VP Richard B. Cheney, who said "deficits don't matter").
The Bush 43 Administration tax cuts for the more fortunate in 2001 and 2003, pushed for by the US Chamber of Commerce; the two Bush recessions (2001 and the one starting in 2007) reduced income tax revenue income; the $800 billion Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit bill passed by Republican-controlled Congress, written by Big PhARMA for Bush without paying for it; a trillion-dollar invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by Bush; and $600 billion spent annually on the defense department added to the debt. Not exactly 'liberal'-supported ideas. Saint Reagan, added the first $6 trillion to the debt. Bush gave us $5 trillion.
Wasn't it Clinton who gave us a surplus and paid on the national debt? Clinton budget surpluses caused the Fed Chairman Greenspan to declare that the US would be out of debt by 2010 and generating surpluses of $800 billion a year. He must have never imagined the damage Republicans could again cause the nation.
An informed editor would recommend an increase in taxes to attack the debt as well as a reduction in deficit spending by not invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries; maintaining 800 military bases worldwide; tax giveaways for the wealthy; an increase in the gasoline tax for infrastructure investments; a transaction tax on Wall Street; as a start. Or we could just bring back the 'conservatives'....can you say Cheney/Palin 2012........hm!
John Cecil Baughman
Marienville