Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Liberals trying to thwart genuine budget reform

E.J. Dionne, in his Monday column, “ ‘We’re broke’ a lie we keep being fed,” is the latest liberal to try out the left’s new story line to hold off the conservative budget cutters who gained power in November’s elections.

Like all things political, the truth depends on the meaning of each word of “We’re broke.” If “we” means the federal government, then the fact that we are borrowing about 40 cents of each dollar of current spending would mean that we are broke.

However, a nation that owns a printing press, as we do, can never be broke. Dionne writes of borrowing money on favorable terms, but currently most of the borrowing is not from Asia, but from the Federal Reserve, which creates the money from nothing, lowering the value of the dollar and creating the commodity inflation that we are seeing in metals, food and fuel.

If, as liberal thinker and filmmaker Michael Moore believes, there are plenty of rich people to tax, then we are not broke. Test this one out yourself at home. Dig out Form 1040, find line 60 (your total tax), and imagine we all send in about twice the figure on that line. That would fund the government’s current expense.

So we have three choices: We could cut spending drastically and see a true political hell; continue to borrow from ourselves, debasing our money further; or completely break the economy by trying to collect the taxes necessary to fund the various entitlements we have come to deem necessary.

No good choices, but it seems like a good time for the debate.

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