Bush’s Budget Taps Social Security Surplus

Re “Bush’s Budget Opts for Debt to Fund War,” Feb. 5: Your graph showed 66 cents of each dollar going to human services such as Social Security. The vast majority of these funds are self-funded Social Security funds. When you exclude them and focus on the discretionary spending that Congress and the president actually control, over 50% of these discretionary funds go to the military. This is also because the Defense Department’s budget does not include the Energy Department’s budget, which pays tens of billions of dollars for our nuclear weapons programs; the $7 billion in the Department of Transportation proposed for the Coast Guard and the almost $5 billion slated for airport security; billions to the State Department to support our war on terrorism; and the scores of billions of dollars in interest payments that can be laid squarely at the feet of the Reagan military buildup.

Congress created the unified budget, bringing the trust funds into its pie charts, to hide the above picture, but it is up to us to set it straight.

Larry Frank

Venice

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How do you spell deficit? B-I-N-L-A-D-E-N.

Alan Matis

Sherman Oaks

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In “An Orgy of Defense Spending” (Commentary, Feb. 5), Robert Scheer claimed that the president’s budget, specifically the increase in defense spending, will do more damage to our country than any terrorist. Really? Spending increases on our military will be worse than planes flying into buildings, the murder of thousands of people, the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in New York alone and the resulting changes in our lifestyle? Is he serious?

Amazing that Scheer’s screed is directed at Bush’s proposed military spending, yet when a Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, pushed through pork-fest legislation to spend nearly $25 billion to lease Boeing planes (made in her home state, of course) without the safety net of competitive bids, Scheer said nothing of her actions. In fact, in a Jan. 8 commentary, he briefly mentioned the boondoggle, but get this: He blamed Bush, not Murray, for bailing out a company that was laying off workers. Amazing, but not surprising.

D.R. Stewart

Annandale, Va.

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What is so maddening about the current deficit and the proposed need to dig into the Social Security fund surplus is that last year’s tax cut was a result of the administration and Congress turning a deaf ear to what the public wanted. (Polls at the time showed that Americans did not want the Bush tax cut.) Now 80% of the public (Times Poll, Feb. 5) prefers deferring the tax cut to dipping into the Social Security surplus.

Now, let’s see. We the voters somewhat elected the president and directly elected members of Congress. Right? But wait a minute. We forgot to make that large campaign contribution.

Jim Hoover

Huntington Beach