Just found out yesterday after writing a letter to the editor, that our local paper is going to charge for any letters that mention any political party.  They said this is a form of advertisement.  You wonder how the Federalist Papers would have ever gotten published.  Letters to the editor seems like a definite free speech right.

Here’s what I wrote before I knew about the changes:

Dear Editor

I’m as concerned as any American over the increasing national debt. But my concern is that the Republicans from Reagan through Bush increased the national debt from less than a trillion dollars to ten trillion by time President Bush left office.

The new Republican House has done nothing to create one job or balance the budget. Here are the facts. They insist on extending the tax cuts to those making over $250,000. This adds $70 billion dollars a year to the debt. They voted to increase defense spending by $40 billion which, when added together, adds $111,000,000,000 ($111 billion dollars) to the 2012 budget. Now they insist on cutting $60 billion to balance the budget. And what is it they want to cut. It’s programs that affect 90% of all Americans, while leaving the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in place.

Anyone who can subtract can see that if you increase the debt by $111 billion and cut $60 billion in programs for all of us, they’ve still increased the deficit by $50 billion. So we lose important programs that help the poor and middle class while increasing the deficit by $50 billion. It doesn’t make sense.

In addition, when you cut budgets, you cut jobs. Since 2/3 of the economy consists of consumer spending, we’ll have more and more people out of work with no money to spend. This would be disastrous for the economy.

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I changed the first part of the letter and got rid of all references to the Republicans.  We’ll see if he accepts it.  I will let you know in a few days.

I’m as concerned as any American over the increasing national debt.

The House of Representatives has done nothing to create one job or balance the budget. Here are the facts. The House insists on extending the tax cuts to those making over $250,000. This adds $70 billion dollars a year to the debt. They voted to increase defense spending by $40 billion which, when added together, adds $111,000,000,000 ($111 billion dollars) to the 2012 budget.  Now they insist on cutting $60 billion to balance the budget. And what is it they want to cut. It’s programs that affect 90% of all Americans, while leaving the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in place.