Congress must raise taxes to offset debt
I feel certain that I’m not the only person concerned about the national debt. We hear Congress repeatedly talking about the need to raise the debt ceiling to prevent defaulting on our financial obligations. I can’t quite wrap my head around why the conversation never includes a strategy for decreasing debt.
We spend vast amounts of money every year on interest payments. This is money whose only function is to avoid default. Our biggest creditor is China. Imagine their pleasure from watching our country struggle to authorize that expense. And for what purpose? It is to fund tax reductions for wealthy Americans and corporations. If they need more money, they should borrow it themselves instead of asking taxpayers to carry the load.
Apparently, nobody in Congress understands the most basic tenets of economics -- if you have too much debt, you have to offset that with more income, not more debt. Nobody wants to be remembered for raising taxes, and yet there is no option, no alternate source of revenue for the federal government. Of course, they understand it but lack the courage to address it. Power is the goal, not prosperity or security.
MICHAEL CAIN, ROSWELL
Trump wants to stop U.S. from bankruptcy
It seems that many Americans do not understand the danger that our country faces because of our debt. Let’s provide some perspective. Let’s say that a family has an annual income of $49,000. Now, let’s say that their annual expenses are $68,000, meaning they have a shortfall of $19,000.
Let’s say that we have a rich uncle who has been lending us money at current interest rates, and we are paying him $9,000 in interest annually on the $360,000 we have borrowed from him.
It is obvious that this family is in deep financial trouble. They are spending more than they are making and borrowing money that they cannot afford to pay back. If you add eight zeroes to the above numbers, that is the situation that our country is in.
What Trump/Musk/DOGE and the Republicans are doing to attack the excess spending/waste/corruption, etc., is vital to prevent the U.S. from being a bankrupt third-world nation.
BRANDT ROSS, ATLANTA
They don’t care if nation gets hurt
Patricia Murphy betrays an assumption a lot of us share, that though the Trump administration will realize that its hamfisted actions will actually cost lives and money, they “may realize that too late.” (“Who really needs the CDC? We all do now,” Feb. 27).
The assumption is that they care. They don’t care. They’re collecting the money and the power, and they. Don’t. Care. We are not going to argue our way out of this with reason. Congress needs to suck it up and do its job, and the courts need to do their job and rein in this malicious baby-king.
JAY LYLE, DECATUR
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