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GOP has no ideas for reducing deficit

Republicans continue to campaign against the federal deficit and the health care act. The facts are: The overall federal deficit has dropped dramatically. Deficits increased steadily from the 1960s through the early 1990s, and then declined rapidly for the remainder of the 1990s. Federal deficits increased in the early 2000s, and went over 10 percent of GDP in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. In the recovery from the Crash of 2008, deficits have slowly reduced and are now at less than 3 percent of GDP. It is now projected to total nearly $5 trillion less by 2020 than was expected just four years ago.

The Affordable Care Act is improving the health of the vital Medicare program, which is threatened by an influx of millions of baby boomers. Millions of people have health care now who didn't have it before. Medicare will continue to need adjustments, but the outlook is brighter today than it was four years ago.

Today the stock market is at record highs, and that is good for investors, owners of 401(k)s and retirement programs. Employment continues to improve, albeit slowly, yet unemployment is lessening, despite the shipping of jobs out of the country and the elimination of more than 50,000 factories in the preceding decade that cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs each month.

So why do the Republicans want to deny this progress and reverse the trend? They don't offer anything more than tax cuts (for the rich) which contributed to the financial disaster of the 2008 recession, while they propose keeping the minimum wage so low as to keep those full-time employees in poverty and unable to purchase consumer goods which would benefit the economy.

Marie Harris

Bartlett

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