Effect of Tax Cuts on the U.S. Treasury

Your March 28 editorial, “A Bad Time for Tax Cuts,” was right on. Mention could have been made that President Reagan’s failed “trickle down” fiscal policy during his administration resulted in increasing the national debt some $2 trillion. To this day that debt remains unpaid and the interest payments each year of about $100 billion remain as a millstone hanging around taxpayers’ necks. One wonders if the voters will ever wake up and realize that the Republicans’ “it’s your money” campaign is nothing but a con job that loots the public treasury -- just as George W. is continuing to do every day of his administration -- and in the long run makes more taxes necessary.

James R. Gallagher

Huntington Beach

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Not surprisingly, The Times’ tax-and-spend bias shined through again. It is not at all “poppycock” that decreasing the onerous tax burden indeed boosts an economy, and The Times might do well to recall that none other than Democrat beacons John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy both have spoken to that effect. And you might look a little closer at the myth that Reagan’s tax cuts (decreasing tax rates from the high-70% ranges!) caused deficits. In fact, Reagan’s tax cuts were predictably stimulative, as tax cuts would prove today. The federal government’s revenue doubled during the Reagan years; the deficits were caused by out-of-control spending by congressional Democrats. They consistently spent over Reagan’s veto and, particularly in the Democrat-controlled House, labeled his budgets, which attempted to rein in spending, “dead on arrival.”

Chris Chilcott

Fullerton