Letters

Letters to the editor, Dec. 30

Hernando Today
Published: December 31, 2012

I am amazed how politicians can banter back and forth about the cost of making our schools safe, they talk as though they are buying or selling a commodity on the stock exchange.

There are many things we as a nation can't afford, we can't afford to spend a billion dollars a day on wars, we can't afford to spend billions of dollars on campaign ads, we as a nation can't afford to pay lifelong benefits salaries to politicians, but sadly we do!

So how can we not afford to make our schools safe? Our we putting a price tag on our children, are they not as important as the next fighter jet or candidate for president, to listen to some talking heads on the TV it makes you wonder.

I don't know if arming our teachers is the answer or putting resource officers in every school will stop the next mentally disturbed person from planning the next unspeakable disaster but we have to try.

The measures we have used in the past to secure our institutions are not working, we need some new and better concepts. Sandy Hook School has to be the last casualty, what ever the cost we have to find a fool proof system that protects our kids.

I think we all would choose to spend our tax dollars protecting our kids than lining the pockets of some foreign dignitary or paying for some perk or benefit for our elected officials.

James Woods

Brooksville

Why debt reduction?

Our nation is going down the road to bankruptcy and social disaster – Obama and most of the democratic congressmen are not willing to make substantial cuts in spending but only small cuts and are proposing more spending, which is hard to understand.

We are now $15 trillion in debt, however, this is not counting the $54 trillion owed by the government to the Social Security system, which the government has spent over the years, which money belonged to the social security and the government does not have this money to repay. The government should never have been trusted with this money; it should have been set aside for the individuals, which has been proposed recently.

The answer to the debt we are in by the democrats and Obama is to raise taxes on the rich, which increase will only be sufficient funds to run the government for eight days. This proposal is politician, in order to get the support of all those who are not rich. It's Obama's tactics of the poor against the rich.

The government debts have come from many poor decisions made by congress, however, I would like to discuss only one source, which is duplication of government services and waste of money.

Duplication of services costs the government billions of dollars each year. The government auditing office, GAO, has recently reported that there are over 700 cases of duplicate services and recommended that the duplicate service be cut, but to date nothing has been done. The cutting of duplicate service will cut government spending by one trillion or more over a period of 10 years.

A typical example of duplication of services is where there is a funding program for inspection of cheese pizzas and there is a second funded program for inspection of pepperoni pizzas.

Another example is where there was a second funded program for $30 million for the inspection of catfish, while there was an existing funded program also for the inspection of catfish.

The reason for so many expensive cases of duplication of services is that our members of congress keep adding duplicate programs in order to impress their voters as to what a good job they are doing, even though they knew it was a duplicate service.

Duplicate services are putting the government in debt for billions each year. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has been fighting to stop the wasteful spending of duplicate programs since 2010 without success. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has kept Coburn's bill from coming to the senate floor for a vote.

The reason for the opposition of cutting out duplicate service by the democrats is political because they do not want the public to think that they are cutting vital services and want to put the responsibility onto the backs of the republicans.

The deep indebtedness of the government has a negative effect on both small and large business and is discouraging employment. We need to solve this debt problem today. It's up to you to make this known to our government, particularly Senator Bill Nelson, who is opposing real cutting of spending and duplicate services. Wake up America.

Norman Pallot

Weeki Wachee