Richard--


I want to make one addition to your list:

Too many voters have forgotten that Al Gore had promised to put Clinton's surplus in a "lockbox" for Social Security and that George W. not only squandered it with huge tax cuts favoring the wealthy and with his reckless war in Iraq but also ran up a huge part of the deficit we face.

I think one of the problems we face as a nation is a serious lack of economic and financial education on the part of the populace. Economic experts have debunked the "supply-side" theory of economic stimulus for years. For recovery you need to deficit spend in order to create jobs that will not only put people back to work and put money in their pockets but also serves a public purpose, e.g. infrastructure. Along with tax cuts for the middle class, this promotes spending by those who will put most, if not all, of that money back into the market creating demand, demand stimulates supply. The part of the supply side that does need some impetus is research and development and the proposed tax relief there should help entrepreneurs and businesses to invest and create new and useful products that people would want to buy.

In addition I am convinced that few people have an appreciation for the extent to which our financial system was a house of cards and that the TARP and Recovery Act really did save us from an abyss.

Just a few of my thoughts.

Mary Fran Piepmeier




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