To the editor: Contributing author Josh Hammer takes a well-worn web page from the right-wing playbook in his feedback on the U.S. authorities’s fiscal challenges (“DOGE was a great begin. Trump must push additional for actual fiscal change,” Might 30). He cherry-picks seemingly indefensible authorities expenditures and makes use of them to mischaracterize the Division of Authorities Effectivity cuts that already are damaging authorities companies and federally funded scientific analysis. The $175 billion of purported cuts he ballyhoos quantity to lower than 5% of the $4 trillion (a median of the $3 trillion to $5 trillion estimates) that may very well be added to the nationwide deficit if President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are prolonged.
Why doesn’t Hammer even point out the income facet of the deficit equation? Advocates of chopping extensions declare it’s crucial for financial development. The earlier cuts, which principally focused high-income taxpayers, did not contribute meaningfully to development. What number of instances do we have to be taught that Artwork Laffer was unsuitable about tax cuts paying for themselves through financial development? The Trump tax cuts ignored by Hammer gasoline the deficits he claims to oppose.
Daniel Stone, Los Angeles
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To the editor: DOGE was a great begin? Did we overlook after they fired tons of of the nation’s nuclear consultants and tried to scramble to rent them again? What about when these laptop geniuses didn’t know how one can learn knowledge and thought that there have been tens of hundreds of thousands of lifeless individuals amassing Social Safety? Or after they “by chance” minimize USAID’s Ebola aid? Should you ran a enterprise this poorly, you’d be sacked instantly.
It’s humorous how the individuals obsessive about “effectivity” and “fraud” are solely ever involved about packages that assist residents and by no means with blatant company corruption. Medicare? Far cheaper and extra environment friendly than non-public insurance coverage. Medicare Benefit, the huge giveaway to non-public insurers? Wildly wasteful however by no means on any so-called conservative’s chopping block. Republicans all the time whine about “fiscal duty,” however one simple approach to save cash could be to not give trillions away in tax cuts to billionaires. If you’d like a authorities that works effectively, you must fund and workers it correctly, not randomly hearth individuals and be shocked when it seems these individuals did one thing vital.
Kyle Kramer, Los Angeles
