Bush claimed tax cuts would pay for themselves. They did not

To the editor,

Mitt Romney speaking in Des Moines, Iowa recently stated "a prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation... , and when you add up his (President Obama) policies, this president has increased the national debt by five trillion dollars."

If one believes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, CBO, the policies from the George W. Bush Administration is the main causes for the national debt and is to be the main source for future deficits. The facts are that President Obama had to go into deficit spending to move this country out of recession. The vast bulk of the deficit came after President Clinton gave President Bush a surplus. Bush used the surplus and borrowed monies from the Chinese to pay for his tax-cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, there is some blame on Obama for the deficit but this country needs to remember that George W. Bush started with a surplus and gave it away. The recession started on his watch.

Mitt Romney has called for $10.7-trillion in proposed tax cuts, with no specifics of course, which is much larger than the amount of tax cuts under G.W. Bush. Bush claimed the tax cuts would pay for themselves. History demonstrates that they did not. Romney is making the same claim, tax cuts will pay for themselves. It appears that Mitt Romney's fiscal policies will follow the same path as Bush's to which some economists claim will make the US deficit even worse. Romney is going to have to do a better job of explaining his rationale for debt reduction before I can have faith that he can extinguish the "prairie fire" sweeping across this nation.

Marcia Hayward

Laconia