National deficit will remain until one side makes a move
Our Constitution gives the power of the purse to the House of Representatives and the Senate. Current radical right Republicans are trying to force massive cuts to popular programs via the massive Trump tax cut that is creating huge deficits.
The Republicans enacted this tax cut without spending cuts. Social Security and Medicare are funded by a separate payroll tax. The upshot of all this is huge deficits are here to stay until one side makes a move.
In the 1950s and 1960s, everyone believed that the government did good things. Since Reagan, our population has been groomed to believe that government is the enemy. Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act package, and part of that was to rebuild critical infrastructure. Prior to this, America was crumbling from the inside out.
A population groomed to believe taxes are bad doesn’t want high taxes. America is in crisis because half of America believes in this foolishness.
BOB LOWTHER, DALLAS
Both political sides share nation’s core values
Reading Pamela Paul’s “Meaning of liberal changes with time” and Ross Douthat’s “The clearest lesson of bad leader’s election” (Opinion, Nov. 26), I’m starting to wonder if these two columnists find themselves waking up on the wrong side of The New York Times. Liberal Paul’s dissection of what liberal and progressive have come to mean and what their claimants stand for isn’t an appealing picture. And conservative Douthat busies himself finding as much to dislike on the right as on the left.
Are we reaching a point where liberals reject the hard left and conservatives reject the hard right, only to find that core values of individual liberty, free speech and democracy are shared values of both ideologies, with neither side having sole ownership and neither side being their destroyer? Both sides would be better off leaving their fringes behind.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
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