The Congressional Budget Office recently released numbers indicating

that a lower budget deficit than expected will be incurred by the year 2002.

The numbers also indicated that a balanced budget could be achieved by simply freezing discretionary spending at current levels, allowing for increases due to inflation.

This idea has been promoted by Republicans for a long time now, but they won’t get the credit.

Bill Clinton will attempt to use these CBO numbers to try and convince voters that cuts in entitlement spending are unnecessary for a balanced budget. Don’t be misled by this line of thinking.

The goal of the Republican Congress is to reduce federal spending and cut taxes so people can keep more of what they earn. I doubt that you could find anyone who thinks they don’t pay enough in taxes.

When a person has to work the first 4 to 5 months of the year just to pay taxes, there’s something wrong.

That something is the amount of money and power centralized in Washington D.C.

Dan McLeran

Junior

Chemical Engineering