Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Freitag, of Strafford, who is chair of the Strafford Selectboard, which is currently working on its 2018 town budget.
[P]olitics in its essence is said to be about who gets what and who pays it. In this regard, the most important issue facing us at right now is the tax bill before Congress. There is no question that reforming the tax code is needed But as currently proposed, and being attempted to be rammed through Congress without the traditional process of committee hearings, it is yet another shift toward giving more money to the most wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country and in particular future generations, who will have to make up for the inevitable massive increase in deficit spending.
Much of what is proposed in articles and commentaries in VTDigger concerns worthy goals and programs that address important needs. Yet meeting these needs is dependent on the revenues raised or money borrowed. Unfortunately since the last time the federal budget was in the black, during the final year of the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush tax cut and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in large increases in the deficit and the squandering of resources. The financial bailout during the early years of the Obama administration, needed to keep our economy from collapsing, also added significantly to the deficit.
The reality is that while we can chose or not to be prudent and responsible with state and local budgets, what happens on a federal level is of utmost importance and will greatly affect what we have to work with and what we are able to accomplish in Vermont. Like it or not a good deal of the revenue we are able to raise goes to the federal government and much of what we have to spend comes from Washington as well.
Recently, I have been spending some time reading speeches by past President Dwight David Eisenhower. Much of what he had to say in regards to McCarthyism about using fear, false information, and creating divisions applies to our current political situation. His comments on budgets and how money is allocated also still resonates. In a speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953, the president and former supreme commander of Allied Forces in WWII said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
How we raise and spend money matters, and at this point in time, what is happening in Washington, D.C., is the most important event of all.
