Balanced budget the goal

Sun., Oct. 13, 2013

Let us try and simplify the reason for the ridiculous name-calling and questionable actions that are taking place. It is because the Republicans want to balance the budget, and the Democrats don’t want to. Perhaps we should define some terms.

Budget is what they hope to collect in revenue and that is hopefully going to match the expenses for that year. If the revenue doesn’t match the expenses, then we go further in debt. Our debt will be $17 trillion on or about Oct. 17. We now take one dime, one nickel and one penny out of each dollar that we collect to pay the interest.

We should remember that we didn’t hit $1 trillion until 1980, and the budget hasn’t been balanced since Bill Clinton was president. Also, we are paying a low rate of interest on some of our debt because of some trickery by the Federal Reserve.

Gerald Ray

Spokane

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