Tea Partyers grasp the problem

Kevin Alexander, Logandale

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011 | 2 a.m.

Regarding Daniel Olivier’s letter in Wednesday’s Sun:

I and many more Tea Partyers get it. We are close to $15 trillion dollars in debt, with $85 trillion plus in unfunded mandates.

If President Barack Obama gets re-elected he will leave us with over $20 trillion dollars of debt. There are some Republicans on Capital Hill who are running for president who don’t get it either. Some of their plans balance the budget 10 years from now, but we don’t have 10 more years of deficit spending left. We need to shrink the size of government at the federal, state and local levels now, not later.

This year we will spend close to $287 billion on interest payments on our debt. If things don’t change by 2028 we will be spending more than $1 trillion a year on just interest. This is nuts.

If we don’t deal with these problems now, then we will be forced into a austerity plan run by other countries. Is that what you want? We can’t afford having 50 percent of the people in this country paying no federal income taxes. President Obama says everybody must have some skin in the game. We Tea Partyers think that the 50 percent of Americans who pay nothing are part of everybody. It’s time to start pinching some skin.