Tax vote guarantees deficits in trillions

The author of an April 20 letter unfavorably contrasting state to federal tax policies may wish to consider the following information. In voting for the $1.5 trillion in tax reductions, and for the new budget bill with its huge deficit, congressmen Roskam, Hultgren and their fellow Republicans assured that the U.S. will have an annual deficit of at least $1 trillion for at least the next decade. And, the enormous national debt to which this adds will soon result in interest on that debt exceeding the entire military budget.

All the extra money you receive because of the federal tax decrease is borrowed. This is a bit like increasing your annual income by $1,000 by adding an extra $1,000 to your credit card balance each year. And where do you think the Republicans will borrow the extra money needed to pay for their "gifts" of tax decreases and spending increases? About a third of it will come from the surplus Social Security, Medicare and other federal pension funds have accumulated to pay you and other workers when they retire.

About half of the rest comes from state and local government and private sector retirement accounts. Much of the remainder is borrowed from foreign governments, with the biggest lender being the Chinese Communist government, which uses our debt to keep the value of the dollar higher than the value of its currency, thereby perpetuating our nation's unfavorable trade balance with China.

Ironically, this scenario of keeping taxes low by borrowing is exactly what got Illinois into its current fiscal mess - we "borrowed " from our state employees' pension funds, and now cannot pay it back without huge increases in state taxes, or by attempting to pay our state pensioners less than we promised them.

So down the line the same problem will face the federal government, thanks to political chicanery by Roskam, Hultgren and their Republican co-conspirators. Either there will need to be massive increases in federal taxes, and/or Social Security, Medicare and other retirement earnings will be substantially reduced.

Darold Barnum

Oak Park