LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: SMOKE AND MIRRORS AND LIES

To the Editor:

Europeans say we are the most over-informed nation in the world, and judging from the number of newspapers and television news shows, that might seem to be the case. But when you listen to or read the comments of respondents to Man on the Street type interviews, you have to wonder.

For example, the interviews on National Public Radio regarding the 4-cent gasoline tax that went into effect recently, and that is supposed to begin reducing the federal deficit -- our deficit -- sometime in the misty future.

"Oh, yes," says the woman motorist interviewed, "I hate to pay it but if it's good for the country..." "Yes," says another well-informed motorist, "it's terrible but we have to do something to reduce this awful deficit...." (A deficit produced by the same cast of free-wheeling characters who now want you to believe they are going to pass budgets that will someday reduce said deficit....)

Smoke and mirrors. Lie after lie....

Never mind that historically we have used gasoline taxes to pay for highway and bridge improvements and maintenance, and nothing else. That too was supposed to be a trust fund, separated from the general budget that's so deeply in debt. Now it's on a par with the Social Security Trust Fund, which the free-spending liberals, and presumably a few conservatives as well, annually loot to the tune of up to $70 billion for general expenditures....

Have all these people forgotten that in 1990 the Democrats pushed through a budget that was supposed to reduce the terrible deficit by $450 billion? That's the one the liberals bargained the hapless George Bush into signing. Then the gleeful Democrats turned it around and used it against him when he sought re-election. Too late George must have realized he was a fool who had made a bargain with the devil.

Of course the big spending cuts weren't supposed to take effect until after Bush's second term, just as the big cuts, and the $500 billion deficit reduction, called for in the Democrats' new budget aren't supposed to take effect until Clinton's second term ... assuming he wins another. (Next year, remember: Every House Democrat voted to hike taxes for the third time in a decade, and every Senate Democrat except those seeking immediate re-election, also voted to hike taxes....)

Meanwhile, the new budget increases the deficit by $100 billion or some such figure this year, and more next year and every year thereafter until, miraculously, some mechanism kicks in five years down the road and they mysteriously find a way to start reducing federal spending and the deficit.

Even the White House's own figures show federal spending increasing by $313 billion annually by 1998. And why not, with all that new tax money pouring in? Anybody ever look at a graph that shows how many billions in new revenues flowed to the Feds during the 1980s -- and how the deficit continued to grow. Give these guys money, they're gonna spend it.

Reduce the deficit? What a laugh. Smoke and mirrors. Lie after lie....

Let's see if we can understand the big-spenders' logic. The deficit is terrible, it must be decreased, and in 1990 and again in 1993 they pass the biggest tax increases in history to reduce it. Each time they postpone the actual reductions for five years or more, meanwhile increasing spending to increase the deficit while waiting for that magic moment when it becomes crucial to start reducing the deficit.

The new budget and tax increase and deficit-reducing plan, almost identical to the first, overlaps the former, and the gullible public says, OK, I don't mind paying a higher gas tax because in four or five years that new tax money is going to start reducing the awful deficit that the Democrats have run up....

Then we have the proposed health care reform that defies all logic, even that of the Bill and Hillary, those recycled 1960s George McGovern hippies. Never mind that we already have Medicare and Medicaid, which take care of two major segments of society, the older folk and the poor, and which are the fastest growing parts of the already bloated national budget.

Now we're all going to have cradle-to-grave health insurance for all, and we're going to pay for it without any increase in taxes except for a measly tax on those nasty old cigarettes.

Oops, that was the old plan.... Now that they have actually presented their miracle plan we find that it's going to cost a bit more than projected -- like raise the fees for 50 percent of the populace and all the businesses.

Smoke and mirrors. Lie after lie....

And when it's all passed and we hear or read the Man on the Street interviews, there will be some blissfully innocent respondent saying, "Well, yes, it's terrible that 60 percent of my paycheck has to go for taxes. But if it's good for the country...."

Bill Zellmer

Cape Girardeau