LETTERS: CLINTON TAKES A STAND

To the editor:

If your credit-card balance were overdrawn, in order to generate the funds to pay it off, would you immediately sell of half your land to a developer who promised to replace your vegetable patch with a toxic waste dump that would pollute what's left? Or would you quietly and calmly adjust your grocery and entertainment expenses enough to pay off the overdue balance in maybe a slightly longer time?

Republican congressmen and senators seem intent on giving away the future, sacrificing health, the environment, endangered species (of unimaginable value) and social programs for an immediate redress in the federal overdraft that their predecessors in the keep-spending-while-cutting-taxes Reagan administration provoked.

This doesn't make good sense. We are fortunate that President Clinton is prepared to stand and face them. Would that he had vetoed earlier destructive and unpopular Contract With America legislation.

ALAN JOURNET

Cape Girardeau