So if the “debt deal” passed by Congress and signed into law by the president is such a great deal, will someone please explain how spending $2.1 trillion now, while cutting spending by $1 trillion now and maybe cutting more later will help decrease the debt?

I understand if the new committee of 12 does not agree what and where to cut, that there will be automatic cuts, 50 percent coming from defense spending. These further cuts are supposed to total with those already agreed upon to equal the spending increase.

But the problem is that spending occurs now and (supposed) saving occurs later.

This is the same thought process that got us into this mess to begin with.

It’s akin to a family spending $4,000 per month, while their income is only $2,000 per month. But their grand plan is that in the future, they will spend only $3,000 per month and then they’ll have a family meeting to see if they can stop spending another $1,000 per month, all the time knowing they cannot agree on where to stop spending. The problem is still not solved.

History has shown that the savings rarely occur, because future Congresses are not beholden to the budgets of past Congresses. As the saying goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

By the way, the “tea party downgrade” blame game played by John Kerry, D-Mass., and David Axelrod, adviser to Barack Obama, is nothing but a ploy to detract blame from themselves. If not for anything else, the tea party is for fiscal sanity and smaller government. If those values had been followed, we would not be in this financial mess to begin with.

Greg Paquet, Smithfield

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