Actual vs. imagined deficits

We now have to confront the deficit we have, not the deficit many citizens imagine. The imagined one is caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, subsidies for big oil companies, corporate jet owners and vague out of control spending. The deficit we actually have is caused by the world's highest health care costs (by far), the world's largest and most expensive military (by far) and a social insurance program designed in the middle 1930s. When it was designed, more than half of all men died before age 65, the age when coverage started.

We want to pay for all of this with the lowest tax revenue, as a percentage of gross domestic product, in decades. It does not work and wishful thinking will not make it work.

Both parties have acted totally irresponsible by ignoring the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission report. It is not perfect, just good. All senators and representatives seem more interested in political advantage for next year instead of what is best for the country.

STEVE RICKARD, Cape Girardeau