Bush Abandons Vow, Calls for Tax Increase to Reduce Deficit

President Bush’s acceptance of the inevitability of new taxes to assist in the reduction of the federal deficit is an ironic repudiation of Reaganomics. Ten years ago candidate Bush correctly labeled the economic game plan of fellow candidate Ronald Reagan as “voodoo economics.”

It is almost beyond belief that the American people swallowed an economic program whose pillars rested on the belief that defense increases of hundreds of billions of dollars, linked to tax reductions of hundreds of billions of dollars, could be offset by relatively small reductions in social expenditures and phantom tax revenues from “trickle down” sources. Why is anyone surprised that we ended up with a fiscal program that produced 80 cents of revenue for every $1 of expense?

Now that a bipartisan approach to deficit reduction has finally been established, it is critical that every penny raised in new tax revenues go directly to deficit reduction, and not be diverted to partisan causes. This may be our last chance to avoid a financial catastrophe.

MICHAEL A. SCOTT

Glendora