To the editor: John R. Kasich embraces long-standing Republican obsession with federal deficitsHe laments the failure of Congress’s Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974 to effectively balance the budget. In fact, contrary to Kasich’s contrived concern, budget deficits are not necessarily a bad thing. A Keynesian analysis argues that federal spending is beneficial in mitigating free-market uncertainties, while the logical extension of Kasich’s conservative approach to limiting deficits invariably involves the imposition of austerity measures and a reduction in the scope and funding of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs. But in fact, economic growth spurred by federal spending is often the best way to reduce deficits. In most cases, GDP grows and deficits shrink.
As for Kasich’s claim that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had broad support — well, consistent with the discredited trickle-down theory, it had broad support among the financial and corporate elite, while the working class saw no significant rollback of those indulgent tax cuts, which, predictably, only served to further increase the national debt. The point is that Kasich is drawing attention to a nonexistent problem. What he perceives as the failure of the 1974 Act to restrain systemic debt is not cause for a gloomy economic prognosis. In fact, it is arguably irrelevant. Kasich’s alarmist analysis fails to acknowledge that the deficit myth, according to modern monetary theory, does not necessarily pose a threat to economic growth.
Andrew Spathis, Los Angeles
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To the editor: The op-ed on the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 by John R. Kasich and G. William Hoagland warned that our national deficit and debt are the result of “politics, the insatiable public demand for services, and the public’s lack of appetite for paying more taxes.” It could have mentioned the obvious cause that can actually be attributed to the party responsible: tax cuts for those Americans who least need them signed by Presidents Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump.
Until these disastrous actions are reversed and our wealthy sector is once again paying its fair share, empty words lamenting our fiscal condition are just that and the problem will continue to grow unabated.
Eric Carey, Arlington, Virginia.
