Letter: Federal government is too big, far-reaching

To the Editor:

Sequestration may not be perfect, but it’s a start in the right direction.

Our president proposed, lobbied for and sign legislation that has created this sequestration. Now he is campaigning that this minor decrease in the increase of the federal budget will cause calamity.

Currently, lawmakers are borrowing on our behalf and obligating us to 43 cents of every $1 they spend. Spending like this in President Obama’s tenure has caused our debt to double to $16 trillion (very close or over the GDP). The spending was claimed necessary to revive the economy. The underlying housing problem hasn’t been addressed. We have doubled debt and this recovery is the most anemic in recent history.

How drastic are these cuts? It difficult to get an accurate answer, but the monolithic media generally agreed on $85 billion. Our current budget is $3.5 trillion.

Numbers that large are hard to wrap my head around, so I did some simple junior high mathto learn if you are making $35,000 per year, you would have to cut $850. Would it be uncomfortable? Yes is it the end of the world? No.

Asking the federal government to reduced its budget by 2.4 percent if far from draconian. In fact if you get a paycheck, you already suffered a 2.8 percent cut in pay when the Social Security (FICA) tax holiday was ended this January.

If local teachers, firefighters, police officers or first responders lose their job because of a federal budget cut, my first question is why are those positions not paid for by the local people that benefit from their services? Then they would only lose their job because of local politicians ineptness, not federal politicians’ failed leadership.

Would you turn the house cat out, let your dog become a stray and even ask one of your children to move out because of a 2.3 percent reduction in revenue? No. You would manage, maybe eat out even less or go to the State Fair for holiday instead of traveling.

So why is the politicians’ solution more taxes?

The bottomline is the federal government is too large, involved in too much and way beyond its constitutional authority.

A simple solution is for our elected politicians to do their job.

Jack W Schlichting

Cannon Falls

Tags: opinion, letters