America’s spendthrift habits pose a danger

To the editor:
This administration’s desire to pamper the rich and ignore middle and low-income earners has finally brought us to a predictable crisis. Why can’t we acknowledge that the huge federal deficits piled up over the last eight years, and the need to borrow to make up for them, has been a large part of the problem we now face.

In short, why did we tolerate cutting taxes for the rich in a time of war, and why don’t we now admit that even middle-class taxpayers will have to ante up, too, unless we want more and more of our assets to fall into the hands of foreign lenders and investors and unless we want to see the value of the dollar continue to fall.

The Bush administration and its congressional allies, as well as the Republican candidate for president, have not asked Americans to pay one cent of additional taxes to cover the expenses of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. So we end up borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it from foreign sources whose currencies have gained strength against the dollar. Promising tax cuts may get votes, but it also is getting us into deeper and deeper trouble in world financial markets.

For the first time since World War I, the U.S. became a debtor nation in the mid-1980s, and that trend has only accelerated, especially since 2000. The more debt we pile up, the weaker we become in the world economy. That seems to be a simple deduction, and yet we continue to ignore the elephant in the room. Sooner or later, that means we will be trampled as an economy and society.

All I can say is that America had better wake up before it’s too late.