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Why is Bergman hesitant to raise debt limit?

Representative Bergman in a recent constituent newsletter, May 23, 2023, writes that “Americans make those tough decisions in their personal lives everyday”, referring to the fact that we stand good for the debts we have incurred in our daily lives. When the bills come in, we pay them as part of our obligation when we bought the groceries, our automobile, electricity, or whatever else we needed to maintain our lives. If our spending pattern is out of sync with our income, we must adjust our future spending, but that adjustment has no bearing on our past debt, it still is due and must be paid.

This is the principle Bergman used three times during the Trump years, when he voted to raise the debt limit and pay our bills for the goods and services our country had previously purchased. There were no strings attached and he added $7 trillion of debt to our deficit largely due to the huge tax cuts given to our highest earners. He had no problem raising a clean debt limit then. Why now?

Instead, he is saying no debt limit increase unless we make cuts in future programs which affect Americans who can least afford them. The act which he calls “Limit, Save, and Grow”; cuts Social Security Administration, Food Stamps, Medicaid, VA Administration, Medicare Administration, IRS auditors, student debt relief, and massive cuts to incentives for lowering our fossil fuel consumption and mitigating the global climate crisis. If he wants to talk about changing our budget for the future after he agrees to pay our past bills, then he should include reducing the out-of-control military industrial complex and increasing revenues by eliminating the 2017 income tax cuts for the big corporations and the wealthiest among us.

ROBERT KENNEDY,

Harrisville

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