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From: simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A Vote for Mondale
Message-ID: <593@loral.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Oct-84 14:39:34 EST
Article-I.D.: loral.593
Posted: Tue Oct 30 14:39:34 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Nov-84 02:32:49 EST
References: <52@mit-athena.ARPA> <577@loral.UUCP> <370@fisher.UUCP>
Reply-To: simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard)
Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego, CA
Lines: 46
Summary: 

In article <370@fisher.UUCP> david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin) writes:
>Ahh, Ray blames Congress for the deficits.  Ray, hear this: in the
>last fiscal year, Congress appropriated FIVE billion dollars more than
>Reagan requested.  Out of 175 billion, that's less than 3% of the
>deficit.  Reagan gets the credit for the other 97%...

     Hi Dave,

     Actually, I'm not referring to just the most recent  fiscal  year;  I'm
talking  about five decades (the last two in particular) of expanding social
engineering, income redistribution, pork-barrel,  and  unnecessary  military
spending  that  have  become part of the Washington landscape. You and I and
Reagan are all aware that dismantling  this  seemingly  fixed  structure  of
spending  programs  is  more  than  can  be  accomplished in one or even two
presidential terms, even if Uncle Tip and his flock were not blocking  every
effort to do so.

     The amounts spent by government for  correcting  social  ills,  whether
considered  as  absolute sums or as percentages of GNP or other indices, are
staggering. The problem is, these programs are only marginally effective  at
their intended purpose, and the wrong people are benefitting from them. Com-
pare the levels of social spending  to,  say,  JFK's  era.   The  degree  of
increase since then is enormous, but the percentage of the population in the
grip of poverty is only moderately improved.

     I am not opposed to programs to help the poor, infirm and elderly,  but
I think that I can demand that they be cost-effective. There would be little
or no deficit if the programs we currently have cost only  as  much  as  the
benefit  they  are  providing.  Any scientist knows that when you perform an
experiment enough times, in enough different ways, and it doesn't work,  you
have  to rule your theories invalid and look elsewhere.  The theory that the
government can cure  poverty,  disease  and  social  injustice  by  spending
everyone's  money is just such a failed premise.  This is not an attitude of
greed, just reality.

     Reagan cut taxes to a level somewhat closer to the maximum that  anyone
should ever have to pay for the benefits of government. That spending levels
are still high enough that these tax level cannot cover them means only  one
thing:  spending  is  too  high  (I'm  not excluding the military here BTW).
THAT'S where the deficit comes from.
-- 
[     I am not a stranger, but a friend you haven't met yet     ]

Ray Simard
Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
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