Push for real budget reform next year Re: “Federal shutdown avoided, 2012 budget fight looms,” April 9
House Republicans and Senate Democrats’ 11th hour deal to cut $38.5 billion from the federal budget averted a government shutdown. But this battle only addresses a timeline up until Oct. 1 of this year, when the 2012 budget will begin.
Why have the Republicans and the Tea Party caucus spent so much time and energy when the debt ceiling and fiscal 2012 budget stand as much larger and more critical battles?
Rand Paul and Paul Ryan have both produced their own plans for addressing the country’s debt. Getting either one of these plans (or even just portions) enacted in any sustainable form will require a knock-down, drag-out fight.
Time and energy can now go to where it will be the most valuable: making the case that America desperately needs a Paul Ryan or Rand Paul approach to the budget.
Brian Wrenn
Washington
Mayor Gray should resign over hiring debacle
Re: “Victims of Vince Gray’s hiring debacle start to spill,” April 8
As more of the sordid details of Mayor Gray’s hiring debacle manifest themselves, it becomes increasingly clear that Gerri Mason Hall and Judy Banks are being offered up as sacrificial lambs.
Through his nonchalant and cavalier responses, the mayor is treating District citizens far worse than the House Republicans, who do not equivocate when it comes to their agenda.
Gray ran on a platform of responsible government, transparency, and an end to corruption and politics as usual, yet he has labeled egregious errors as just “missteps” and “distractions” while refusing to take responsibility for abusing the trust he was given as the chief executive of the nation’s capital.
The mayor should acknowledge the irreparable damage he’s done to the city by resigning.
Marvin E. Adams
Washington
Little chance of revolt in Saddam’s Iraq
Re: “Don’t miss the dogs that aren’t barking in the Middle East,” April 5
Noemie Emery’s attempt to retroactively justify what she acknowledged had come to be seen as Bush’s “dumb war” in Iraq by speculating about averted human casualties from Saddam Hussein’s suppression of protests like those which brought down rulers in Egypt and Tunisia misses two key points:
Saddam claimed to know when allies would turn on him even before those allies knew they would, so he was always “ahead of the curve” on clamping down on dissent. He suppressed a revolt after the first Gulf War so brutally that opponents would know better than to try an Egypt-style revolt.
While Saddam may have been brutal, he was fair. His regime took such extreme measures to distribute honest rations that after his removal, his Christian Cabinet minister, Tariq Aziz, was sentenced to death for so strongly suppressing Iraqi price gougers.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria
