LETTERS: ENTITLEMENTS ARE JUST A PART OF MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING

To the editor:

Of late, there is increasing emphasis on entitlements being the culprit that is advancing our nation toward an ultimate economic crisis. To be sure, entitlements are a major expenditure in our national budget. However, it is not accurate or realistic to target this one area of public expenditure and ignore the entire spectrum of spending in which the government(s) are engaged: grants, loans and loan guarantees, special interest concessions and subsidies, S&L buyouts, etc., federal, state and local a mile long. To make one area of government largesse the whipping boy for our dilemma is deceitful.

To decry the coming instability of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds is to shed crocodile tears, considering that Social Security and Medicare income is spent as it arrives with IOU's to the trust fund. (This expenditure as current revenue is not counted in the deficit of record.) Even though there is a large balance in the fund (on paper), it now seems a certainty that new taxes will have to be levied to pay claim recipients at a future time.

The real root of our problem is that we have conditioned ourselves that we can get more than we are willing to pay for. 2 plus 2 is still 4. This fantasy has been going on for decades and perhaps, reached its high point in the 1980s when our public debt soared beyond precedent and comprehension. The truth is we're broke. And, we're out of money and almost out of time. We've only ourselves to blame. We've all participated and we've all benefited, directly or indirectly. Already in the 1950s, a bipartisan congressional committee in a study determined that "virtually all the population would seem to be in a subsidy recipient posture."

Every legislator has to bring something for the folks at home or he/she won't be elected. Something has to be promised (without raising taxes, of course). When everything each legislator has to bring for the home folks is added up, there isn't enough money to go around, so we borrow it.

In Missouri, a $250 million bond issue was touted as requiring no tax increase. Now that passage of Hancock II threatens to prevent a tax increase, suddenly the bond issue that was said to require no tax increase is said to be in jeopardy because to implement it and pay for it would require a tax increase. Even a previous bond issue of a decade ago is behind repayment schedule. Where have the prominent voices of reason and forthrightness been when it was time to forestall these eventualities?

It may be well for all, particularly Christian adherents, to contemplate the real understanding of "rendering unto Caesar" and the further divine exhortation "to whom much has been given, of him will much be required".

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau