Your Opinion: Federal spending must be curtailed

Dear Editor:

Bureaucrats, politicians and those who stand to benefit from more government spending regularly bemoan the horrible condition of our infrastructure. It is enlightening to see how the federal Department of Transportation prioritizes its spending to fix our crumbling infrastructure.

The DOT recently announced $500 million in new spending. Rather than fixing "unsafe" bridges it chose to spend the money on such things as those listed below:

• $29.2 million for streetcar projects.

• $15 million in Los Angeles to turn six miles of abandoned railroad track into a pedestrian/bicycle way.

• $13.8 million on a bicycle boulevard in Hawaii.

• $10.3 million will be spent on eight miles of canal trail in Phoenix.

• $10 million on a mile of bikeway in New York.

• $9 million to install solar panels and bicycle parking at a Rhode Island rest stop.

Would you vote to have your federal taxes increased to fund projects such as those above?

The bureaucrats and politicians can't help themselves. If the above projects are worthy projects then local taxpayers should fund them. I am opposed to paying for them, or funding them by piling more debt on future generations.

Federal spending should be cut back to no more than 18 percent of GDP, as it was during the Clinton years. (The only reason it can't is because politicians, bureaucrats and voters want to use others money to feather their own nests with campaign contributions (bribes), cushy federal jobs from which you can't be fired and freebies for the public.)

In the early to mid-'60s, prior to Vietnam, federal spending was as low as 16.6 percent of GDP, and we nearly had a balanced budget. Deficits totaled $34.5 billion (in 2009 dollars) over eight years.

Currently the feds are spending over 21 percent of GDP, while collecting record high amounts of taxes. With spending at 18 percent of GDP we would have had a $30 billion surplus in 2015; instead we piled $435 billion more debt (only during two years prior to Obama has it ever been this high) on the shoulders of future generations. (Even at the current artificially low interest rates, just the interest on the federal debt costs over $750,000 per minute.)

We must elect people who will rein in the growth of the federal government and return rightful authority to state and local government, and, of course, to We the People.