During six years of service in the Maine Senate, the first lesson learned was: Certain politicians believed themselves smarter than their constituents, opining their needs. President Biden proved the point, following passage of the congressional debt ceiling deal: “No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed.” Biden’s front-page assertion that a crisis was “averted,” (KJ, June 3) should have been factually described as “suspended” to 2025.

The deal does not return government spending to 2022 levels. While defense levels remain flat, current 2023 levels exist for 2024. For 2025, an increase of 1% is provided for non-defense spending. No total figure is mentioned. Go figure it.

The debt limit is suspended to the first quarter of 2025. It leaves the next fight over the debt-limit-ceiling for the new Congress, soon after the 2024 elections. Will the blueprint just finished be enough?

Originally, one party sought a 10-year cap on spending, at fiscal year levels, along with meaningful cuts in domestic levels, unrelated to defense. The other party opposed, and spending at that fiscal level remains in place two years.

President Biden’s referenced celebration, that a “crisis was averted,” escaped the fact that Congress created it. Another debt fiasco will be avoided in 2025 only when Congress applies, common sense fiscal-care akin to what necessarily occurs around kitchen tables, business boards, town meetings, etc.

Whenever crisis is barred, people are involved, who care to carry themselves by inner means of support. And geometry teaches that a number is whole when equal to the sum of its parts.

John Benoit

Manchester    

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