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Exchanging the New Deal for a Raw Deal

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Jonathan Alter’s commentary, “FDR’s ‘Forgotten Man’ at Risk” (Feb. 18), paints a frightening picture of President Bush’s agenda for finishing off the New Deal. Were this to happen, what we will get from the Republicans now is a Raw Deal, and Social Security will become individual insecurity -- again. How apropos are philosopher George Santayana’s words that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.

John and Judith Glass

Studio City

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Alter’s commentary should be required reading for those unsure about Bush’s plan to “reform” Social Security. Bush does not plan to reform it; he plans to kill it.

The defining moment concerning conservatives’ hidden agenda to destroy the New Deal social programs came for me about 1986. David Stockman, who had just resigned as President Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, was asked how, as a conservative, he could justify the monstrous deficit created by the Reagan administration. I think I remember his exact words: “You don’t understand. We did it on purpose.” He explained that the undisclosed plan was to create a deficit so large that there would never in the future be enough money to fund the “socialist” programs of the New Deal and the Great Society -- welfare, Social Security and Medicare.

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A May 25, 2003, article (“Taxing Credibility”) in the L.A. Times, written by Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis, another of those ubiquitous far-to-the-right think tanks, pointed out that a deficit-producing series of tax cuts would “deny government its fuel” and thus result in cutting Social Security, Medicare “and other programs highly popular with the middle class.” It comes down to this: Do we want to live in a kind and decent society that reaches out to all its struggling citizens, or do we want to live in a nation that turns its back on these folks?

Charlie K. Mitchell

Venice

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