EDITOR:
Only in America can one political party take this country from a projected surplus to a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit in a span of eight years (controlling both the White House and Congress for six of those eight years) and apparently be successful with their base on re-writing history that blames the other party for the deficit and the state of our union.
Republicans have tried their best to pin the whole deficit on Obama. The Congressional Budget Office however has a different story than the Republican leadership. The CBO has confirmed that Obama and the stimulus package were responsible for 10 percent of his first year's budget deficit. Bush, Republicans and their policies responsible for the other 90 percent. That 90 percent will take years to pay back.
As I stated in an earlier letter to the editor, Bush and the Republican controlled Congress passed legislation with little regard for its impact on the deficit. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress passed bill after bill with little to no concern on its negative impact on our deficit, i.e. the drug prescription plan and tax cuts to the wealthy. For verification of this go the the CBO Web site.
We had a financial sector that was allowed to run wild (and still is according to most reports) after the gutting the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The Glass-Steagall Act had served us well for almost 70 years preventing deep recessions and a depression. Among one of the things the Glass-Steagall Act did was to prevent financial institutions from becoming "too big to fail" by defining them as either a bank (simple lender) or underwriter (brokerage).
Republicans don't want to implement needed regulation (especially since they had fought for almost 70 years to repeal this Act) sighting it would hurt business with too much government interference. My question to them is, how do you stop risk takers from taking risks when they are well paid when they are successful and now, well paid when they fail (i.e. too big to fail)?
Irene Gutierrez
Gardnerville
