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 good start. Trump needs to push further for real 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 providers 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 could possibly be added to the nationwide deficit if President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are prolonged.
Why doesn’t Hammer even point out the income aspect of the deficit equation? Advocates of slicing extensions declare it’s mandatory for financial progress. The earlier cuts, which principally focused high-income taxpayers, didn’t contribute meaningfully to progress. What number of instances do we have to be taught that Artwork Laffer was flawed about tax cuts paying for themselves by way of financial progress? 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 very good 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 pc geniuses didn’t know the way to learn information and thought that there have been tens of hundreds of thousands of lifeless folks accumulating Social Safety? Or after they “by chance” lower USAID’s Ebola reduction? In case you ran a enterprise this poorly, you’d be sacked instantly.
It’s humorous how the folks obsessive about “effectivity” and “fraud” are solely ever involved about applications 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 accountability,” however one straightforward method to economize could be to not give trillions away in tax cuts to billionaires. In order for you a authorities that works effectively, you must fund and workers it correctly, not randomly hearth folks and be shocked when it seems these folks did one thing vital.
Kyle Kramer, Los Angeles
