Obama should quit blaming Bush for everything
To the editor:
The Washington Post babbled again recently about Barack Obama inheriting a huge budget deficit from George W. Bush, blah, blah, blah. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.
So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.
Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for fiscal years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with President Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when the president somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed Mr. Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of the very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as president to complete FY 2009.
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Mr. Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Mr. Obama is saying is that he inherited a deficit that he voted for -- and then he voted to expand that deficit four-fold since Jan. 20.
Robert Gant
Las Vegas
Taxes and fees
To the editor:
Our lawmakers just do not get it. When I read about the special legislative session, all I hear about are tax and fee increases.
Last spring I watched as the lawmakers raised taxes and increased the state budget in the middle of the recession. Now I see that the Democrats and Republicans are preparing to raise taxes again. We need to vote these folks out of office and get working people into the state government.
Until that happens, Nevada will have a hard time recovering from this poor economy.
Message to Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford: Fee increases are tax increases.
Phillip Regeski
Las Vegas
Candid camera
To the editor:
Another bad idea to help balance the state budget: traffic camera insurance validation.
Not that it couldn't be done, but why on Earth do it? If it is the desire of the state of Nevada that all registered vehicles be insured, the least efficient way to go about that would be to take a random sample of plate numbers driving past a random number of cameras.
In the real world, what must be done is to validate every entry on the database of registered vehicles by cross referencing against a database of valid insurance policies. How much simpler does that sound?
What we have been reading in the news about having a private company set up equipment to "catch" uninsured motorists is just some marketing guy's wild assertion. The prospect of free money has an allure, but that is just a best-case possibility. Nevada does have a duty to seek out and find uninsured motorists, but why give away a chunk of that much-needed revenue when we don't need to?
Use of optical character recognition camera technology does have potential when the objective is to develop evidence identifying hit-and-run drivers, identifying potential witnesses in accidents, identifying speeders, etc. But the idea of using it for such a mundane task as cleaning up a database is just absurd.
JAMES C. PATTERSON
HENDERSON
Check out
To the editor:
I applaud Sen. Harry Reid for shepherding the jobs bill through the Senate on Tuesday -- a measure that I hope will bring jobs to Nevada. Yet I do not understand how Sen. Reid can continue to support card-check legislation, a proposition that would harm Nevada's businesses and cost countless jobs.
Card check would have disastrous consequences and cancel out any positive effects from the new jobs bill. Sen. Reid needs to act with one message on jobs: We need more of them. His support of card check drastically dilutes that message.
Barbara Bordelove
Henderson
Common sense
To the editor:
So the Republicans are the party of "No," and doing something is better than doing nothing.
The truth is that Democrats are so locked into "my way or the highway" that they refuse to acknowledge any alternative solutions. If a person can't afford or see the good of a world tour, it doesn't mean he isn't up for a road trip. And doing nothing is better than doing something if that something is wrong and wasteful and unaffordable on a budget facing bankruptcy.
The point is that "No" and "wait a minute to think this out" are sometimes just common sense in the face of someone screaming "I want it all and I want it now."
Some of us out here have something to lose.
KENT RISCHLING
LAS VEGAS
