Letters to the Editor: The Republican obsession with budget deficits
To the editor: John R. Kasich embraces the time-worn Republican obsession with federal deficits. He laments the failure of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to effectively balance the budget. In fact, contrary to Kasich’s contrived concern, budget deficits aren’t necessarily a bad thing. A Keynesian analysis argues for the benefit of federal spending to mitigate free market uncertainties, while the logical extension of Kasich’s conservative approach to limiting deficits invariably involves the imposition of austerity measures and a reduction in the scope and funding of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. But, in fact, economic growth stimulated by federal spending is usually the best way to reduce deficits. In most cases, the GDP grows and the deficit shrinks.
As for Kasich’s claim that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had broad support, well, consistent with the discredited trickle-down theory, it had broad support among the financial and corporate elite while the working class saw no significant reduction from those indulgent tax cuts, which, predictably, only served to further increase the national debt. The point is, Kasich is drawing attention to a nonexistent problem. What he perceives as the failure of the 1974 Act to restrain systemic debt is not a cause for a bleak economic forecast. In fact, it is arguably irrelevant. Kasich’s alarmist analysis fails to recognize that the deficit myth, according to modern monetary theory, does not necessarily pose a threat to economic growth.
Andrew Spathis, Los Angeles
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To the editor: The op-ed on the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act by John R. Kasich and G. William Hoagland advised that our deficit and national debt are a result of “politics, insatiable public demand for services and little public appetite to pay more taxes.” It might have mentioned the obvious cause that can actually be assigned to the party responsible — tax cuts for those Americans least in need of getting them signed by Presidents Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump.
Until these disastrous actions are rolled back and our wealth sector resumes paying an equitable share, empty words bemoaning our fiscal condition are just that and the problem will continue to grow unabated.
Eric Carey, Arlington, Va.
