LETTERS: RESOLVING THE BUDGET

To the editor:

The conventional wisdom regarding the present federal budget impasse is that the two sides are only a few dollars apart and a resolution should be readily forthcoming. Not so. They're miles apart.

This is the clash of the politics of rich and poor. The real gridlock is the question of "from whom are things taken away and to whom are things given." This is almost the Armageddon of the struggle between the well-entrenched social program concept initiated in 1932 in the FDR administration and the laissez-faire proponents who would demolish it.

The present stress point we now experience is how to throttle down the reckless, bipartisan, abandoned spending of the 1980s and the 1990s (which we thought was prosperity) and come down to earth and pay our bills. Every segment of our society has participated in the federal government largesse. Because there isn't enough money to go around (and we're facing the end of our borrowing streak), it now is a political dilemma to satisfy every political constituency.

Objectively, the urgency of both parties to deliver some kind of a tax cut, in the face of ruinous deficits, is just plain dumb. Whether reason will somehow prevail and both parties will ultimately see the wisdom of generating some way of constructively accepting the reality of sharing on all fronts and conveying this intelligently to the electorate is yet to be seen.

Polls are bearing out the long-held notion that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, while the Democrats are seen as the party of tax and spend. Both have been the parties of borrow and spend. If the desperation of the moment brings forth some creditable voice of leadership to define for us the real meaning of political axioms and idioms (conservative/liberal, subsidy/welfare, etc.), then there is some hope that we, as a society, may live beyond the point of national suicide.

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau