Your Opinion: Investment reflects trust in America

Dear Editor:

Let's consider debt. Since 1962 the debt ceiling has routinely been raised 74 times. Now given the recent manufactured hysteria over the national debt, you would think debt is "always" bad.

The Tea Party movement must think so. They will do anything to reduce our national debt. They seemed proud to hold a gun to our nation's head to force debt reduction. It is the only thing they consider, except when they don't.

In the last decade finance has moved into the college loan scene. If your family is not wealthy, you will need student loans. By the time you complete a residency, student loans could be $125,000 to $200,000. Doctors are marketable. Despite crushing debt, young doctors are likely to pay off their debt.

Conservatives and Tea Party members have no faith in America. They must not believe in America investing in itself. And they certainly do not believe in taxes to pay for progress. America needs education, roads, bridges, investment in research and an improved energy infrastructure. We need to invest in ourselves and pay the price.

We are a powerful nation that could do most anything if we would invest in ourselves. Now those who have no faith in our nation want our government to reduce tax revenues added on top of the greatest economic pullback since the Great Depression. Such conservative retrenchment will merely cause continued high unemployment. They say they want to restore prosperity, but that prosperity seems only for America's richest.

Patriotism can be overdone. But, you could easily say this kind of greedy thinking on the part of conservatives and the Tea Party nation is not patriotic. Our worst enemies are not without but within. They want our government to fail.

Many fellow citizens write letters published here that call for putting people to work on our decaying infrastructure. Why aren't all citizens calling for this? The vast majority of citizens would prosper from the jobs and the improvements. The economy would prosper.

How did we get from vice president Cheney telling Paul O'Neil in 2002 that debt does not matter, to where all that matters to conservatives is debt?

Our debt only matters if you think America is what Nixon feared, "A pitiful helpless giant." If you have no faith in America's ability to grow, you can choose to shut America down. For this, you will reap what you sow.