Congress should vote to pay U.S. debts and not default

Editor:

In a recent interview with Newsmax, (1/30/23), Claudia Tenney complained that raising the debt limit is driving inflation. I am just dumbstruck at the ignorance of this statement.

Raising the debt limit does not authorize any new spending; it simply allows the government to pay its obligations.

Both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to the national debt. In fact about $7.8 trillion of the $31.4 trillion debt that now must be paid, or 24.8% of the debt, came from the Trump administration. Raising the debt ceiling is an obligation and is not negotiable. Defaulting on the debt could result in global economic catastrophe.

The time to work on the U.S. debt is during the budget process. That is when spending and taxing are negotiated. The Biden administration has already slowed the increase in the national debt.

From the last year of the Trump administration the deficit grew by $2.6 trillion dollars, and the first year of the Biden administration the gap was only $1.4 trillion. Admittedly, this is still too large.

One of the ways to close the debt is to tax the wealthy and large corporations – that is why the Biden administration has hired more IRS agents. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that hiring more agents will bring in $200 billion over the next ten years.

One analysis showed that corporations like Amazon, Exxon-Mobil, Microsoft, and JP Morgan-Chase paid less than 10% tax rate in 2021 despite record profits.

Ms. Tenney is gaslighting her constituents. If she was serious about the national debt she would be honest about the debt ceiling and ways of reducing it instead of making ridiculous nonsense comments.

William Fine

Brockport