The Senate is now decrying the national debt and the great budget imbalance and debating where to cut next. They do not discuss where the debt came from, since the budget was balanced 10 years ago. To paraphrase and simplify Charles Dickens, the difference between happiness and woe is the balance between income and expenditure. Our present woe resulted from cutting income (taxes) at a time of great expenditure (wars) and resulting borrowing with interest (more expenditure). You caused the deficit, gentlemen; now face it and fix it.
You actually can't fix it by cutting programs; there isn't enough in them. You can't fix it by taking from the poor and middle class; they have no more to give. No matter how many hungry children, sick people, mortgage foreclosures and homeless you create, it will not solve your problem, which is not addressable on the expenditure side.
You can address it only on the income side, by restoring the taxes whose absence caused the problem in the first place. Unpalatable as it is, you may have to do the unthinkable — take a little from the rich. To put it more simply for you: Fish where the fish are.
Thelma Iker
Salt Lake City