Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lacks leadership skills but makes excuses about lack of political momentum

Letters to the Editor published in the Los Angeles Times: If the government shuts down, Kevin McCarthy will bear some of the blame!  

To the editor: An open letter to Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (Republican Representative for Bakersfield California):

Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy is required to demonstrate political leadership.

You’ve created a dilemma for yourself on the budget resolution. While you gave extremist radicals everything they asked for, they still refuse to govern responsibly. 

Although you and President Joe Biden made an agreement to avoid U.S. debt default, the extremists wanted you to dishonor the deal with new spending cuts — and you complied! Nevertheless, your party’s ideologues refuse to fund the government. You yielded to their irresponsible calls to waste time and resources for impeachment without credible evidence, yet those radical Republicans still refuse to support serious governing.

There’s a way out of this dilemma caused by your bad choices. Propose a clean, fully funded continuing resolution with no political stunts riding in sidecars. Surely, you can find four reasonable Republicans (plus yourself) to vote with the Democrats and keep our government going.

There’s a way out of this dilemma caused by your bad choices. Propose a clean, fully funded continuing resolution with no political stunts riding in sidecars. Surely, you can find four reasonable Republicans (plus yourself) to vote with the Democrats and keep our government going.

That’s what real governing, real leadership, would look like.

From Bruce Joffe, in Piedmont, California

Scranton Pennsylvania - opinion about tax cuts for the rich

Costly tax cuts for the rich: (echo editorial)

Republican tax cuts for the rich will concentrate wealth in the upper wealthy who will not re-invest in workers or corporations, until well after they receive their stock dividends ~ if ever.

The Times Tribune Editor: (Scranton Pennsylvania)

Congressional Republicans jammed their tax-cut scheme forward without concern about its destruction to our economy.

It will accelerate the concentration of wealth to a few super-richies who finance election campaigns while the rest of us must pay for it with reduced government services and additional $1.5 trillion of debt. Nonpartisan economic analyses by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office, the Tax Policy Center, the Penn-Warton Budget Model and hundreds of professional economists agree that the hoped-for economic stimulus will not cover the debt the tax cut will generate.

Republicans cite only one study, by the partisan Tax Foundation, which projects 2.9 percent economic growth over 10 years to pay for the tax cuts. 

But, that has never happened with previous cuts. Moreover, the Federal Reserve’s policy is to raise interest rates when growth exceeds 2 percent in order to avoid hyperinflation.

Corporations, already holding a trillion dollars of cash, haven’t invested in many new jobs. Giving them additional money through tax breaks won’t increase their investment, it will only make the rich guys richer.

Republicans do not represent their voters. They weaken the strength of our economy. Bruce Joffe, Piedmont, California