Richard London

State College

Republicans say our 32 trillion dollar national debt is due to “reckless Democrat spending.” Untrue. The debt is primarily caused by irresponsible Republican revenue forfeiture.

At the beginning of 2001, Bush-43 inherited a balanced budget, but voluntarily forfeited some of the scheduled revenue, via tax cuts, later that year and again in 2003, creating inevitable revenue shortfalls and subsequent borrowing. In 2017 the Trump Administration worsened the situation with additional tax cuts. Very little of the accumulated debt has been caused by overspending. (Exceptions are the special spending by Bush-43 (to finance the Afghanistan/Iraq Wars), and Biden (to provide COVID financial relief).

Surely Republicans knew this massive forfeiture of revenue would inevitably create massive debt, but, in fact, they falsely claimed that it would not lead to debt at all! “Tax cuts pay for themselves.” Rubbish!

Believing this to be true shows appalling ignorance. Knowing it’s not true is simply lying. Since they are not entirely stupid, the second explanation is more likely the case. Their argument is a cover story to hide the real reason for the tax cuts, namely buying campaign contributions, and votes, come the next election.

Those Republicans should not have forfeited so much of our revenue. But they did, and it’s now too late to balance the budget. Our debt will continue to grow because it’s easy to reduce taxes and nearly impossible to raise them.

The best we can do now is vote for Democrats, thereby avoiding further cases of Republican fiscal irresponsibility.