Well, it was a good laugh. The closing sentence in the letter titled "Thankfully our Presidential Leadership gives us hope” states that we should all have a little love, compassion and kindness regarding our president’s leadership. Love, kindness and compassion, — really?

This a president who became TV famous for firing people; a trait he seems to have perfected while in the Oval Office. This is a president who seems to revel in tagging people with belittling nicknames. This administration that has reduced the qualifications for food stamps and other safety net programs.

But let’s try to keep this civil and start by reviewing some numbers. These are numbers that can be less manipulated by one’s political agenda and relate to the president’s big success — the economy. The national debt in 2017 was 20.25 trillion and 22.7 trillion in 2019. The president has increased the debt by 2.45 trillion in two years.

Revenues (taxes, tariffs etc) declined slightly by 2 trillion in 2018, probably due to the tax cuts, but rebounded in 2019 to 3.6 trillion. The budget for 2019 was 4.6 trillion, with 3.6 trillion coming from revenue, 1 trillion coming from borrowed debt. If the economy is doing so well, why are we borrowing a trillion dollars a year to supplement the budget?

So we have a debt of 22.7 trillion and we have revenue of 3.6 trillion to pay for it. If we did nothing (no military, roads, etc.) more than to try to pay off our debt, it would take 6.3 years to do so with the current revenue.

To give these numbers more meaning let's use an everyday household example. Suppose you had an income (revenue) of $80,000 per year. If the family was carrying the same debt load as the government, it would have a debt of $504,000. If you were lucky enough to get a second mortgage of 4%, your yearly interest payment would be $20,160, and that’s just interest.

All of these numbers are prior to coronavirus. The takeaway here is it’s easy to look successful when you are paying for things with borrowed money. And now with the coronavirus disrupting our economy, things are going to get really ugly. Debt will climb to 25 trillion plus, revenue could fall below 3 trillion. I believe the president will have no choice but to increase the China trade war — increasing tariffs to help the revenue shortfall. But of course this is nothing more than a hidden tax that we all will be paying for with increase pricing of imported goods.

These are sobering numbers that don’t give me much hope. You want hope, vote for a change.

David Swanson
Bristol