Marc Abear: Doing the right thing just cannot 'happen'

To The Daily Sun,

Neither presidential candidate is serious about our national debt. America is approaching $36 trillion in national debt and still spending $1.8 trillion more than it collects annually. ... Neither candidate has a word to say on the subject...

Our debt is surpassing the size of the entire U.S. economy. This year we will spend a projected $892 billion for interest on our debt. That’s more than we spend on defense.

Still the promises keep coming. ... As Nov. 5 nears the candidates are dangling expensive targeted tax breaks and adding to our patchwork of fiscal giveaways/subsidies. It’s political vote-buying and too many of us love it, think it’s free money... but we are stealing from our kids and grandkids.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget crunched the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaign numbers. They report Harris scores better than Trump. She’s proposing to double our taxes he’s not. Neither is cutting spending, balancing the budget nor paying down the debt.

The longer Washington puts off addressing America’s indebtedness, the more painful the required remedy becomes. The only way to control federal spending is to address entitlements. Neither candidate is talking about fixing Social Security or Medicare. All we’re hearing is give away more money, we don’t have.

We have no crisis requiring spending increases. This should be the time to change, to get a handle on the budget. The economy is strong enough to make necessary changes. Inflation is coming down but when interest rates climb the cost of paying off our debt will skyrocket.

It’s an election year. We have maximum leverage to right the ship. What should we be pushing for? A simple public pledge: no new borrowing until the situation is fixed. That makes so much sense, readers know it cannot happen.

Marc Abear

Meredith