Hold The GOP Accountable: They Broke it. Now They Must Own Up

Here are some letters published in the Tucson Citizen. Now is the time for all of us to express our rage and be heard! Onward! Write your own letter to the editor now.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

March 27, 2009, 4:13 p.m.
Tucson Citizen
letters@tucsoncitizen.com

Republican leaders' inflated claims fall flat


Republican leaders in Congress are bemoaning their projection that President Obama will double the national debt in 10 years and "bankrupt" the country.

Many of these Republican leaders, including Arizona's own Jon Kyl and John McCain, were in Congress when:

• Ronald Reagan nearly tripled the national debt from all previous presidents combined from $937 billion to almost $3 trillion. Dick Cheney later said, "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

• Bill Clinton's National Deficit Reduction Act of 1993 (which did not receive a single Republican vote) reduced the federal deficit and produced the first surplus budgets since LBJ's last budget in 1969.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in February 2001 in favor of reducing federal revenues so the national debt would not be paid off too quickly.

• George W. Bush doubled the national debt from slightly more than $5 trillion to almost $11 trillion, aided and abetted by these very same Republican leaders.

Three-fourths of our national debt today was accumulated under three Republican presidents: Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

The Republican leaders who drove this country into the ditch now complain to the tow-truck driver who has come to the rescue that it is going to cost a lot of money to get the country out of the ditch and back onto the road to prosperity.

These Republican leaders should be sent into exile never to be heard from again.

Roger A. White


Give AIG executives the boot - boot camp


The AIG, Merrill Lynch and other players whose greed, irresponsibility and arrogance brought down the economy probably did not break the law.

The last 12 years of deregulation - thank you Phil Gramm - and laissez-faire attitude of the regulatory agencies probably make their behavior legal. But these people clearly lack moral integrity and social values.

We send teenagers who get into mild trouble or who display patterns of antisocial behavior to Boot Camp to learn some discipline and the value of cooperation, so they mature and develop nondestructive behavior patterns. I suggest we do the same for this crop of Wall Street delinquents.

Let's send the people who were the top salary and bonus earners in these failed companies to reality boot camp.

Wouldn't it be appropriate for John Thain, formerly of Merrill Lynch (rumored to be McCain's choice for Treasury secretary), who handed out billions in bonuses and redid his office bathroom with a $1,000 trash can and $3,000 toilet, to strike out into the woods to do his business with a hand shovel and three pieces of useless paper that were once valuable stocks ?

How about making AIG execs who are used to drinking $300 bottles of wine with their $500 meals find their own drinking water in a stream a mile away, and forage for their dinners?

After six months of survival training, we'll test their readiness for the real world by giving them jobs as custodians in schools filled with low-income students, pay them 50 cents below minimum wage, with no end-of-year bonuses. That should test their new-found moral fortitude.

Joan Safier

retired teacher