We can’t afford not to cut waste

Michael O. Kreps, Las Vegas

Thursday, June 13, 2013 | 2 a.m.

In a recent letter to the editor, Ed Dornlas stated that citizens are weary of hearing about the national debt accumulated by our generosity and says it is a fantasy to think we can grow our way out of our debt by cutting taxes. Mr. Dornlas also states that because we are such a generous country, we will bear the “cost of bringing in millions of new immigrants into our entitlement programs.” He mentioned that one way to pay for this would be raising taxes.

For people who believe that raising taxes is the answer, the math does not work. In 2000, our national debt was $5.6 trillion dollars and in 2012, it rose to $16 trillion. For the past four years, our national budget has had deficits of more than $1 trillion each year and it is projected to continue this upward spiral.

If we raised the taxes on those “rich folks” and were to seize all of their money and assets, the U.S. Treasury would receive approximately $1.5 trillion dollars. That would pay for the deficit for this year. So next year where are we going to get the taxes to pay for all these generous programs?

We are living in a fantasy land to think that all we have to do is raise taxes and our financial problems will go away.

Unless we get real and start cutting the federal budget and eliminating fraud and waste, we will wake up one day and find ourselves bankrupt.

Ask yourself: If you ran your household budget the same way the president and Congress run the federal budget, how long would it be before you went into bankruptcy? I do not want to give anymore of my hard earned money to the government because they do not spend it wisely.