Deficits are about excess spending

To Mr. Paul Williams of Palatine, your belief that tax cuts for the wealthy led to huge deficits appears to be overlooking the 800 pound gorilla in the room. And that beast is spending.

Dragging in FOX News into your argument it takes away the creditably for the rest of your arguments. You draw the allusion that President Reagan was responsible for bringing the tax rate down from 90 percent to 28 percent. A detail that you overlooked in your argument that it was President Kennedy who brought it down to 77 percent, Johnson, another Democrat, to 70 percent. During most of Reagan’s term, the rate was 50 percent. It wasn’t until Reagan’s last term that it went to 28 percent, passed by a Democratic Congress. And despite those cuts, revenue rose every year. And yes, when Clinton was president, there was a budget surplus that coincided with the GOP controlling both Houses, first time since 1954.

You can argue that by raising taxes on the wealthy might bring in more revenue; however, the real facts are if you spend more money then you take in you will run a deficit. So if the Bush 43 tax cuts expire, the Buffett rule gets passed and even if you get the 48 percent who don’t pay any taxes to contribute something, it will not offset the $1 trillion dollars in excess spending that the CBO expects the feds to spend this year.

So politics aside, the deficits have more to do with excess spending and less to do with what the tax rates are.

Ron Feldman

Roselle