LETTERS: CLINTON, DOLE IGNORE FINANCIAL REALITIES

To the editor:

Here is an open letter to President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole:

Honorable Sirs:

It is no secret that the electorate's excitement for your candidacies for president is generally lackluster. For the most part, it seems that both of you are viewed as well-financed political operatives obsessed with winning the election and otherwise fiddling while Rome burns. Both of you are contending that we are at an important juncture in our nation life. You stress the need to be realistic, yet you are trying desperately to convince each segment of our society that the crunch necessary to solve our problems will not hurt any of us, even offering a tax cut in the face of continuing deficits. How dumb. How deceptive.

Since 1978, there have been eight legislative attempts to compel a balanced budget. Each time, the opportunity was passed by as if it didn't exist. Only a major, grass-roots restive action by Americans, driven by forthright leadership, will bring about serious consideration and implementation of a balanced budget. Both of you need to seriously and truthfully address the situation our nation is in. We're broke. We're still being coddled to live on borrowed money and told we need a tax break. You're part and parcel of the deception.

You are standing by as Medicare, health care and Social Security are engineered into a quagmire instead of giving leadership to a fundable national health-care program and Social Security, and you are prevailing on a self-respecting society to pay the bill, using the specter of redistribution of wealth and socialism to turn the unsuspecting electorate against it. You close your eyes to continued corporate welfare and special-interest subsidy, while making welfare to the poor as a whipping boy. Crime in the streets, breakdown of family stability, welfare abuse -- all are simply the beginning symptoms of the impending revolution if you don't get with it.

I know that if either of you call for the kind of austerity necessary to really address the future, it is likely you will not be elected. However, if you don't, win or lose, you'll not be the statesmen you purport to be, and you'll simply join the line of Reaganesque clowns going down the fairway.

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau