I'm cleaning out the garage. An old editorial from Oct..30,1987 re the deficit

[Contrary1]

Part 1

The author, Richard K. Shull, was a contributor to the long gone Indianapolis News. Unfortunately, Mr. Shull is long gone too. I always enjoyed his columns. A glimpse into the Reagan years...


"Officially, Halloween is Saturday. You know, Halloween, when parents obscure their children's vision and send them out to play in the darkened streets and take candy from strangers?

This year, the adults got the jump on the kids, scaring hell out of one-another for nearly two weeks with what President Reagan calls "a market adjustment" and others call the end of the world.

According to persistent reports, the future of the free word and its economic system are teetering on the brink of collapse.

The 28-year-olds MBAs of Wall Street are in panic, not knowing where their next million will come from.

Uncle Sam is so deep in hock he can't keep up payments on the juice, let alone ever reduce the principal, on his debts to the global loan sharks.

Yet, the only way to stabilize the world market is to get America's deficit under control.

Otherwise, the Japanese bankers are going to quit buying our IOUs.

The Japanese, traditionalists that they are, adhere to the old adage, "You don't cure a spendthrift by lining his purse with money."

So at long last reagan and Democratic Congressional leaders are beginning to talk together about budget cuts. an indication-but only an indication-they may be willing to start to begin to acknowledge there may possibly be some relationship between government income, outgo and the state of the economy.

For openers, they're scratching their heads over how to pare $23 Billion from the Federal budget to get in line with the deficit-reduction demands of the Gramm-Rudman Act, a hopeful plan to shrink deficit spending progressively each year until Washington achieves utopia in 1993, with a balanced budget.

The $23 Billion would be the absolute minimum that needs to be trimmed from the fiscal 1988 budget. Creditors of our debtor nation would sleep better if Reagan and the Congressional leaders could chop even more from the spending program.

That would be a show of good faith.

If there's anything a leader hates to see, it's a debtor pull up outside the bank in a new Mercedes with a chrome hitch for the boat trailer and plead poor-mouth..."

The next part is "Meanwhile at the Pentagon". If there is enough response, I will post it. Takes a while for this two-fingered typist. (Spell check showed only 8 errors) :)

[Fumesucker]

1. How quaint, $23 billion..

That would be a rounding error in today's budgets..

Thanks for posting..

[unblock]

2. reagan et al. absolutely blasted carter for his annual deficit of what, $200bn?

now that's a MONTHLY deficit.

[druidity33]

3. as a slow typist myself,

i can tell you I really appreciate you taking the time to retype this. I've done so occasionally and it always kinda sucks to get no responses to the time consuming effort that's been made. Last time it was so that i could retype a passage from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US. Reading that Zinn book recently, i was struck by how things really haven't changed that much since the inception of this country. For that matter, since the conception of "property".

I was a teen during the Reagan years/17 during the '88 election, so i missed that one. I guess i didn't really start paying attention to politics until i visited Britain in the early nineties. I took part in a few Student demonstrations, even an occupation. Opened my eyes to the power people have when they UNITE.

Thanks for the thread... K&R.