Enough partisanship on unemployment, debt

To the editor:

I picked up Friday's Review-Journal to see the headline, "Republicans kill jobless aid bill." Also highlighted was a quote from Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley: "This rejection is a slap in the face to out-of work Nevadans."

Rep. Berkley is doing her usual fine job of widening the partisan divide by pointing the finger at those bad ol' Republicans. It is the same routine she used when George W. Bush was in office by always referring to him as the "oil and gas president" at every opportunity.

There was more to this vote than Republicans killing a bill for the jobless. If Democrats had been willing to make equivalent budget cuts in other areas, I suspect there would have been no trouble passing the measure. Instead, the Obama administration and the Democrat congressional majority insisted on adding more billions of dollars to our unsustainable national debt.

The president talks about "pay as you go" -- the concept that for every increase in budget there must be a decrease somewhere else. However, there is an exception: If it is an "emergency," pay-as-you-go rules do not apply. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have irresponsibly and recklessly been added to the national debt under the guise of a declared emergency?

Rep. Berkley may talk about the slap in the face to out-of-work Nevadans, but what about the insult to all American taxpayers?

Our children and grandchildren will be suffering from the burden piled on by this administration for generations.

This should not be a Democrat problem or a Republican problem, but an American problem that should be addressed in a nonpartisan fashion for a change.

Bill Thompson

Las Vegas