To the editor:
Pledging to never raise taxes and then complaining about the resulting deficits is like pledging to never eat fiber, then complaining about constipation. It is like a football coach pledging to never run the ball who then yells at his quarterback for throwing interceptions. It is an insane fiscal policy.
And yet this is precisely the situation Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, signed by 88% of current Republicans in Congress, has created. Today, 18% of your tax dollars goes merely to pay the interest on our national debt. That’s just the interest — not the principal.
They have claimed that deficits can be reduced through spending cuts. However, despite having total legislative control on three occasions — 2003-2007, 2017-2019 and 2025-present — congressional Republicans have never reduced the deficit. They didn’t even consider it. A reasonable, indeed a fiscally conservative, person must conclude that they are wrong.
We will need to raise taxes to reduce our deficit, and we must vote for leaders who understand this. The alternative is that our interest payment grows until the federal government must print money to pay it, and then the dollar collapses. That is a bad outcome, and while I suppose you could blame it on Joe Biden, it won’t help.
Ed Birdyshaw,
West Plains
