Tax cuts to blame for deficit

Bill Whalen’s letter (“Let’s take a bow to fiscal conservatism,” Jan. 4) argues for restoring presidential line-item veto authority as a partial, largely symbolic way to reduce the federal deficit and the national debt.

Whalen claims the line-item veto would curb Congressional “pork” spending (on the order of $23 billion in 2004), but he ignores the elephant in the fiscal room: Bush’s tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, which will reduce federal tax income by about 1.35 trillion dollars over 10 years. A more balanced tax policy, rather than a further expansion of executive power, should be considered in any serious search for ways to help us awaken from our federal fiscal nightmare.

John Griffin

Alumnus, Political Science