U.S. Government Must Learn to Operate Within its Means
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
I have to strongly disagree with reader Rowan Lindley’s letter last week. (“Republican Debt Ceiling Bill Would Have Severe Negative Consequences”)
She is only looking at a microscopic part of the problem. Cutting federal funding for colleges will have an impact on the students but raising the debt limit will have severe negative effect on the entire country. The federal debt is already $31 trillion. Raising the debt ceiling, as Ms. Lindley wants, will only make that debt bigger.
The U.S. government must reduce its annual spending rather than raise the debt limit. In the next couple of years, the annual interest payments on the national debt will exceed the amount of money the government takes in annually. In other words, even raising taxes to 1950s and ‘60s levels (top marginal rate at 91 percent) will not help. Neither will making “the rich pay their fair share.”
By the way, my son has thousands of dollars in college debt that he is trying to repay. In spite of that, I vehemently oppose, and will continue to vehemently oppose, any attempts at college loan forgiveness. One, college debt forgiveness will add more trillions to the national debt. Two, why should the vast majority of American taxpayers who either did not go to college or did not incur any debt or paid off their college debt be forced to pay off somebody else’s college debt?
When students signed up for college loans, they signed legally binding contracts. As the first act of their adult life, they need to honor those contracts and not sponge off the taxpayers. Nobody held a gun to their heads to make them sign up for loans.
Christopher Malek
Putnam Valley
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