Learn from the past
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Editor,
"That's just water over the dam" is a phrase used to suggest we not dwell on the past but just move on.
Well, let's look at something in our past which definitely needs scrutiny and from which we need to learn before we move on in the wrong direction.
I refer to our national debt. The Bush era tax cuts to the rich and two ill-advised wars, not the economic downturn, are primarily responsible for the massive debt now driving cuts to healthcare, education, social services and every other remotely useful purpose.
Just look at these amazing figures of the percentages of our present debt as a share of Gross Domestic Product, which is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. In 2001, it stood at about 30 percent. By 2011, it has shot up to about 70 percent. In the time period 2001-11, the Bush tax cuts and the two wars have accounted for 75 percent of this increase. The other 25 percent is made up of four categories: economic downturn; TARP, Fannie and Freddie; recovery measures; and other debt.
"Water over the dam" had better not be justification to just move on blindly. We desperately need to look carefully at the history here and learn from it. Messing around with cuts to our healthcare, education, social services and infrastructure is only digging the hole deeper without addressing the core of the problem.
Are our Congressional and Executive branches of government so bowed by greed, fear and disregard for the will of the people that the true causes of our debt situation are ignored?
"Water over the dam," my foot. (Explaining "my foot" will take a new letter.)
Bob McClellan
Polson
