Dealing with the deficit

Congress is at it again. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski plans to wipe out the federal budget deficit with $512 billion of spending cuts and tax hikes over five years. While the plan might look good at first glance, look a little closer.

Social security recipients would not receive a cost-of-living adjustment for one year. This freeze will hurt those who can least afford it.

Rostenkowski would also increase federal taxes on gasoline by 15 cents. The gasoline tax is supposed to generate $12 billion a year in revenues and encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars and reduce foreign imports. This would seem to be a contradiction in itself.

As more people switched to fuel-efficient cars the revenue raised from the tax would decrease. Also, more of the smaller foreign imported cars would be purchased — hardly reducing foreign imports. This gas tax is also regressive — that is, the tax would have a harder impact on the middle and lower class. Finally, Congress historically has shown that when taxes are raised, they will spend the revenues rather than reduce the deficit.

Raising taxes and freezing Social Security are not answers to reducing our federal deficit. Congress needs the courage to realize this and deal with the deficit by cutting the fat and waste out of the federal budget before considering any new taxes. Rick Saucier Hermon