Paying for the Katrina catastrophe

Re “The deficit disaster,” Opinion, Sept. 21

I am sure our government has lost touch with reality, as it did in the days of Herbert Hoover. To pay for the costs of Katrina, other debt must be reduced or eliminated, such as that terrible Medicare Part D prescription plan, which hurts all seniors except the most impoverished ones; the highway bill, which has more pork in it than a hog farm in the Midwest, and the war in Iraq, in which billions of dollars are being spent on a civil war we can’t win. Cut the pork, bring the troops home and stop inflating the deficit or there will be hell to pay sooner than everyone thinks. Remember October 1929.

MAXINE FLAM

North Hollywood

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There are two simple ways to pay for the costs of Hurricane Katrina: (1) Don’t extend the tax cut that is set to expire. This tax cut mainly benefits the upper 1% of U.S. residents. (2) Bring the troops home from Iraq. Do these things, and throw in an extension of the estate tax, and we could pay for the hurricane recovery.

BETSY ESTRADA

Mission Viejo