After escalating national debt, Republicans now want deep cuts
The Republican Party has not cared about the national debt since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich negotiated a budget surplus in fiscal year 2001.
Since the early 1980s, when deficit king Reagan took office, the Republican battle cry, as far as government spending goes, is to starve the beast. In other words, cut taxes to the bone and run up the debt so high that elected Democrats will have no choice but to make cuts to beloved entitlement programs.
Deficit kings G.W. Bush and Donald Trump cut taxes on the wealthy to the point that the yearly deficits would make a drunken sailor look responsible by comparison.
Trump added $8 trillion to the national debt without a whimper from congressional Republicans, and now they demand responsible government spending and cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
Deficits must be addressed, but to do so on the backs of the elderly is cruel and unjust, and Republicans need to stop calling themselves the party of family values if they think hurting the elderly is their best path forward.
BOB LOWTHER, DALLAS
Get government out of abortion issue
Some have hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last summer that overturned Roe vs. Wade because the ruling returns the abortion issue to the states.
It is somewhat bewildering, then, why such people oppose abortion rights in the first place. After all, supporting the right to abortion reflects the belief that the abortion issue should ultimately be left to the individuals most directly affected by pregnancy. If the abortion issue should be out of the hands of the federal government, I do not see why it would make sense to think it belongs in the hands of state governments.
It seems that for our country to become a more perfect union, we must be willing to take greater steps in allowing our citizens to better govern themselves.
SANJAY LAL, STOCKBRIDGE
