Your View: 'Reduction' or is it?

Dear Editor,

In the writer's opinion, one of the greatest disservices of the media, political columnists, reporters and politicians, is the treatment accorded to the financial condition of our federal government.

Please let me provide a current example. The President and his cohorts are raving about the "reduction" of the annual deficit., i.e. reduction from what it was in the last quarter or other period. What is left unsaid is that despite the "reduction," the public debt is increased by the amount of that deficit.

Let me illustrate please. In 1980, after 191 years under the Constitution, the public debt was about $700 billion. Now, after eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush I, eight years of Clinton and six and one-half years of Bush II, the debt has increased many fold to $11 trillion (depending on how it is calculated). In Clinton's defense, it can be stated that three or four of his years the debt (not the deficit) was actually reduced.

Vice President Cheney has defended the Republicans by saying when he became Vice President that the deficit or public debt doesn't matter. That was the position of President Hoover and the Republicans in 1929 as our economy crashed. The party paid for that for 50 years.

There will be another crash. Who will get the credit? Perhaps some of it should go to the media for not explaining Bush's "reduction" of the deficit.

Respectfully yours,

Bill D. Burlison Advance