I could not agree more with your Our View editorial April 16 regarding the hypocrisy of U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and the Republican Party when it comes to deficits.

The first thing that needs to be said here is that a balanced-budget amendment would be not only the height of hypocrisy because of the Republican Party’s off-the-rails tax cuts mainly for the rich, which could add more than $2 trillion to the debt, but it also would be the height of stupidity.

The U.S. government is not a household or a business, so the simplistic and uniformed statements about how the government should be operated like a household budget or a business budget does not make sense.

The fact is when our economy is running at or near capacity we should tighten spending and pay down debt, but when a down cycle hits, the government needs to spend more to shorten the severity and length of the recession. We could not do this with a balanced-budget amendment. Imagine what could have happened in 2008-2009, at the beginning of the Great Recession, if this idiotic amendment had been on the books. We would probably still be in the throes of an economic depression.

Now as far as the hypocrisy goes, Mr. Poliquin voted for tax cuts largely targeted to the rich that blew a $1 trillion-plus hole in the debt. The median household income for the 2nd District of Maine is around $40,000, which equates to an average household tax cut of $360 or $6.92 per week. Now for him or any Republican to be talking about fiscal responsibility is definitely the summit of hypocrisy.

The only remedy for this lunacy is to vote Mr. Poliquin and the rest of his Republican cronies out of office this November.

Frank D’Agostino

Harpswell

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