No sacred cows in budget talks

A few weeks ago I signed one of what must have been a legion of emails sent to congressmen urging them to vote against the cutting of funds for National Public Radio. On March 22 I received a reply from the office of Congressman Randy Hultgren, recognizing the value of NPR but suggesting it can survive without public funding. He may be right.

The reply went on to say: “As we work to restore our country to fiscal health, difficult decisions must be made.” He is right about that, too, but a reality check is in order.

First, over the short term spending cuts may harm the still fragile economic recovery. Second, public funding of NPR is around one tenth of one percent of the federal budget. Combining all the proposed cuts to this year’s budget that our congressmen have been quibbling about the last few weeks would not have a consequential effect on deficit spending. To reduce the deficit all of the following consequential measures must be considered over the long term: entitlement reform including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; defense spending reductions; individual and corporate tax reform; and higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy and mega-wealthy.

We must also control overall health care costs, which would have as much or more of an impact on Medicare and Medicaid costs than entitlement reform alone.

We must put aside the thought suppressing and false notion that all other developed countries are socialistic, and conscientiously examine how every other developed country has found a way to guarantee citizens universal access to health care at substantially lower costs than ours per capita and as a percentage of GNP, and with health care outcomes that are as good as or better than ours. We must be willing to learn and improve upon the good ideas of others.

Those representatives who take any of these measures off the table are not fiscally responsible. Until we elect people who are willing to address the deficit pragmatically the prospects for a deficit reduction exercise that is in the best interest of all American citizens and the American economy are rather dim.

Jim Bluemle

Sugar Grove