Writer Plays Loose

I was not aware that Orange County includes the University of Texas at Dallas. But it must be so, since Lloyd J. Dumas, a professor of political economy at UT-Dallas, shows up in Orange County Voices (“Act of Aggression Needed to Convert Military Economy,” Feb. 18). Or perhaps my understanding of U.S. geography has been right all along, and The Times published Prof. Dumas, even though he’s only visiting Orange County, because it deems his thinking politically correct.

I would expect a professor of political economy to have at least rudimentary knowledge of federal budget receipts and outlays. So imagine my astonishment when Dumas states that “federal government figures show 72 cents spent on the military in 1988 for every dollar Americans paid in income taxes,” the obvious implication being that 72% of the budget goes toward national defense. This premise is used to support his position that we have too “large a military when the (Soviet) threat is receding.”

Let’s see what “federal government figures” do show for 1988. Total federal receipts were $909 billion. Total federal outlays were $1.056 trillion. Individual income tax receipts were $393 billion. Defense outlays were $285 billion. Dumas arrived at his 72% by taking the first number and dividing by the second.

Evidently Dumas believes that defense outlays are paid exclusively out of individual income taxes. Nonsense. No receipts are earmarked for specific outlay categories, not even Social Security employment taxes and contributions. It all goes in one big pot. Arithmetic shows that defense was actually only 27% of 1988 total outlays.

Equally erroneous is his claim that the increase in the national debt is due to Reagan’s tax cuts and defense buildup. Since Reagan’s first budget year, (FY 1982) annual federal receipts have gone up by $291 billion, reflecting the economic growth the United States has had from 1982 to now. But thanks to tax-and-spenders like Dumas, annual total outlays have also increased, by $410 billion. Of this increase, $210 billion was non-defense spending.

Defense outlays account for only $335 billion of the $1.252 trillion we’ve added to the national debt since 1982, or 27%. Even if Social Security was “off-budget,” defense would still account for only 34% of the national debt increase.

It would be nice for Dumas to tell us why he plays fast and loose with the numbers. The Times, if it is really as good a newspaper as it says, owes its readers an explanation as well, for publishing Dumas’ brazen juggling of statistics.

LEON E. MCKINNEY

Huntington Beach