Re “Biden stokes the flames of debt and inflation” (Jan. 12): I know it is very convenient for Republicans to blame the Democrats for the current state of debt and inflation, and I’m sorry to mess up a good story with a few facts, but inflation doesn’t happen overnight.
Here are a few facts: Trump inherited a growing economy and budget deficits that had fallen to 2 to 3 percent of GDP. When Trump left office budget deficits were estimated at $13.9 trillion, $3.9 trillion higher than the inherited projection. His legacy is reduced revenues due to a big tax cut for the rich, record spending, the largest peacetime deficit of any president in history, and a national debt that rose $7.8 trillion during his time in office.
Excessive cash in the money supply created an overheated economy. This coupled with reduced supply, due to the world pandemic, created inflation. It is this legacy that will weigh the economy down for years.
Paul Milley
Rancho Santa Fe
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Biden and the Democrats have done nothing to stoke any fires of inflation by doing what should have been done more than 20 years ago. It was the Republicans during the Bush II Administration who stopped infrastructure spending.
That needed spending was already 20 years behind. No, the bag of coal that someone mentioned for this past winter came from the Republicans who passed legislation to reduce the tax load of the rich in 2018. We all get a bag of coal each year now from the Republicans. The “trickle down” Republicans still sit in Congress. And, the problem is the same. Trickle down doesn’t come to paycheck Americans, it goes out of the country by the shipload to countries around the world.
If you don’t tax the excessively rich, the debt load gets geometrically greater by the day.
John H. Borja
Chula Vista
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