Republicans and "spend, spend, spend."

Editor,

No. It is the Republicans who spend, spend, spend. Like drunken sailors. And they run the national debt up to the stratosphere.

Ronald Reagan's 400-ship navy. George W. Bush's multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, unfunded Part-D prescription drug enhancement to Medicare, and two trillion-dollar wars paid for with borrowed money.

Then when the Democrats come to power, the Republicans suddenly become fiscally conservative and blame the debts they ran up on the Democrats.

Bill Clinton cut spending, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and handed George Bush a budget surplus, which Bush promptly gave away to millionaires and billionaires in tax cuts they did not need and squandered on his wars.

This is not to mention the melt-down of the financial system caused by Republican (and Democrat) deregulation of mortgage-backed securities that cost $700 billion here, $700 billion there, and another trillion and a half dollars to half-correct when the Democrats finally came to power.

No. The Republicans do not like spending money on poor people, sick people, old people, disabled people, children, education, the environment, and especially anything that smacks ever-so-slightly of helping immigrants or people of color.

But Republicans love spending money on tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for giant corporations, and anything else they can think of to make the richest 1% of Americans richer at everyone else's expense.

And they are very good at drumming lies and half-truths into the minds of uniformed Americans with their propaganda arms: FOX News and right-wing hate-speech radio.

Re: "Taxes, and a Dangerous Purity" (7/31/2011)