McCarthy fails to recognize U.S. revenue shortfall
I applaud Mike Luckovich’s May 24 cartoon for visually portraying Republican cynicism about a possible government default. It showed a GOP elephant cutting off the wing of an airplane labeled World Economy in mid-flight and concluding a crash (default) falls on Biden because he is the president.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy describes the issue as a spending problem. That’s inaccurate. We have a revenue shortfall that he fails to recognize. A profit and loss statement has a simple formula: Revenues (taxes, fees, etc.) minus expenses (government expenditures) equal profit or loss.
By focusing solely on expenses, McCarthy fails to consider the impact of the 2017 Trump tax cut (revenue shortfall) and refuses even to consider revenue enhancements like closing tax loopholes and tax increases.
The speaker does have one redeeming quality. He shows us what leadership by a political hack looks like in a national crunch and a desire to choose party narrative over responsible solution.
RICH LAPIN, DUNWOODY
Americans live free because of the sacrifice of many
Speaking for the approximately 1% of living Americans, veterans, I was reminded on Memorial Day that this nation was founded through having individuals willing to step forward in securing principles for this land in which we now live, even at the peril of their own lives.
Had many such individuals not done so, our July 4th celebrations would have never come to be. This land, with “colonist” settlers, would have never united into a cohesive, cooperative band of believers capable of throwing off the shackles of European dictators, much less have succeeded over multitudes of tribes of native people entrenched across a wild landscape.
America has been a most attractive place to live, with people flocking here to escape troubled lands elsewhere. However, some here, having never lived under tyranny, want to fundamentally change America into tyrannical suppression quite soon. Freedom is not free!
Wake up, America, while you still can! Let’s not become a “new China,” etc. Precious freedom is already slipping away.
TOM STREETS, ATLANTA
