LETTER: A teachable moment on the U.S. debt
Thank you to Richard Strickland, whose May 26 letter to the Review-Journal about the federal debt provides a teachable moment for all of us. Tax cuts are not “unfunded” and, in fact, going back to the Kennedy administration, have produced additional revenue.
Using whitehouse.gov data for annual federal receipts and outlays, it can easily be seen that the ballooning debt is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. From 2001 to 2023, revenue grew by 237 percent, but spending grew by 356 percent over the same period.
And if you want to focus on each political party, Republican administrations compiled $5 trillion in debt, while Democrat administrations added $16 trillion during the same time frame.
It’s really pretty simple: You’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.