Failure to be a wise economist

Froma Harrop is either naive, ignorant or dishonest [“Honest budgeting includes tax hikes,” Opinion, July 28]. To pretend that she believes, “By the way, their new health care-initiative was fully paid for,” falls in the last category.

I agree that borrowing to spend either for defense or social programs, as all parties and their leaders have done, is foolish and destructive of the future generations’ freedom to set their own course. The courage to cut spending — by denying earmarks (“bridges to nowhere”) and facing up to reality about foreign wars that have no end or ultimate meaning (Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan) and giving voting blocks what they want so long as they vote for the big spenders — is sadly lacking among us.

To pretend as Harrop does that the trillions in debt run up by the Obama administration with its lock-step cohorts in Congress is justified because of the recession is another illustration of her failings as a moral philosopher, economist or wise policy prognosticator.

Raise taxes, Democrats, if you must and wait and see who will be calling the political shots in 2011 — if there will be anything left to shoot at.

— John E. Woodbery, Monroe