To the Editor,

This is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Both our unemployment rate and our national debt are ‘way too high, and improving either one will make the other worse.

Spending money to increase jobs will increase our debt. Laying off government workers to lower spending will increase unemployment. More unemployment = less consumer spending = fewer new jobs. If we do nothing, we stagnate. The Obama Administration is struggling mightily with this inherited mess, but options are few.

Avoiding problems is easier than correcting them. The time to avoid this mess was when our economy was booming and revenues were high. That is when we should have been frugal and used those temporarily increased revenues to prepare for a recession.

We should have left tax rates alone, reduced our national debt, made investments that lowered today’s expenses, and created a rainy-day fund – all one-time expenditures, and all with cash. To cut taxes or start new programs with revenues that will disappear is foolish and unsustainable.

Instead, from Reagan through Bush #2, every time we’ve had a booming economy we have cut taxes, borrowed trillions of dollars, and spent every penny. Our debt has soared, and each recession is more painful than the one before. Wouldn’t you think we’d learn?

Ann Harroun
Loveland, Colorado