Letters to the Editor: We can’t afford to lose trillions in tax cuts when our national debt is this high

To the editor: Contributing writer Veronique de Rugy argues that we have a tremendous national debt because of reckless spending (“Blame both parties for America’s reckless accumulation of debt,” Oct. 3). I think we ought to take a closer look at how the debt was increased by the last four presidents and what we can attribute the increases to. As a starting point, recall that when President Clinton left office, the national debt was $5.8 trillion, about one-sixth of today’s debt.

President George W. Bush added $6.1 trillion to the debt and this was due primarily to tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. President Obama added $8.3 trillion to the national debt and this was primarily due to the great recession — certainly not a war, but a very significant event.

The first Trump administration added $8.2 trillion to the national debt (in half the time Obama held office) and that can be primarily attributed to tax cuts and dealing with the onset of the COVID pandemic. President Biden added $7 trillion to the national debt and that is primarily due to the pandemic bailout. Since Trump’s return to the presidency, the national debt has increased by $1.7 trillion. If that rate of adding to the national debt were to persist, that would add approximately another $9 trillion to the debt by the end of Trump’s term. Certainly, one thing we can attribute that to is rising interest payments.

It seems reasonable to wonder how much of the deficit can be attributed to tax cuts. Let me point out a couple of things in that regard: According to an analysis in Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, by America,” over the last 50 years, personal income in the U.S. has increased by 317%, but the federal government has increased taxes by 252%. Had taxes kept pace with the increase in incomes, that would have resulted in about a 25% increase in the taxes collected. From 1998-2023, the U.S. government collected roughly $71 trillion in income taxes. That additional 25% could have been used to lower the national debt by about $18 trillion, cutting it nearly in half.

Finally, as also noted in “Poverty, by America,” recently the effective tax rate for poor and middle-income taxpayers is about 25%, for the wealthy about 28% and for the 400 richest families about 23%. I don’t know why we are being so charitable to the super rich. There is no reason for the very wealthy to get a tax cut given the size of our national debt. In fact, a modest tax increase seems all too reasonable in addition to looking for some justifiable ways to decrease spending.

Joel Weiner, Tarzana