Letter to the Editor, “Reply to D. A. Benda’s Letter, July 29, 2014”

After a number of attempts to respond to D.A’s questions, this is another try.

D. A. most of your questions have simple answers, and likely the readers have arrived at similar conclusions as mine. Build a rainforest in Iowa for millions of dollars! That effort was started by Senator Grassley about ten years ago with the expectation that the local governments would match funding to complete the project. So far, the best I can determine from the Internet the project has not used any local monies; I understand the designers keep changing their minds while collecting their paycheck, but that is expected when using federal dollars. However, if you were a hunter, you missed the mark by a wide margin. You are getting all hot and bothered over Grassley wanting to build a rainforest in Iowa while our president has continued to borrow one trillion dollars every year since the people elected him president! Obama’s borrowing far out weighs a concern of whether a rain forest is going to get built in Iowa! D.A, a trillion dollars is a million times larger than a million dollars! Can you explain why you are concerned some millions of dollars, but you don’t express any concern about the President and the Democrats spending trillions of dollars every year?

I will say it again; the Republicans are fiscally conservative by a long country mile when compared to the current president and his political party!

D. A. let me give you a short history lesson. President Reagan came into office with our economy experiencing very high inflation and he was confronted with an on-going cold war with Russia. It took him awhile to get our economy pointed in the right direction, and he upped the ante with Russia by matching them dollar for dollar in building our military! Remember, we upgraded our ICBMs; we built larger, stealthier submarines; we build F-16s; and we started a space defense system. Eventually, President Reagan went to Germany and challenged the Russian Prime Minister to tear down the wall that separated East and West Germany. During his administration, the wall did come down and the cold war ended! Do you remember the Germans atop of the Berlin Wall chipping away at it with hammers and small sledge hammers? When the first Bush became president the economy was going so strong that the next President Clinton – inherited an economy that was generating tax revenue faster than his administration could dream up ways for spending. If you look at the statistics, it happened every year of Clinton’s administration to the point our country had a budget surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars and was forecasted to grow larger. President Clinton did make business tax cuts but the tax revenue surpluses continued and was forecast to continue many years into the future!

The second Bush president came along and gave our country a much needed tax break in many different areas. The deficit came about because Americans became greedy; Congress continued to spend like there was no tomorrow, and the long Iraq War was never declared by Congress and was never budgeted. At the time, I thought America was going to have thousands of soldiers dying on the sands of Iraq. I remember our government did an expedited procurement for thousands of body bags. President Bush picked military leaders and turned them loose and they executed and won a decisive war against the Iraqi army. The bitter pill was fighting the Islamic extremists in both religious bodies afterwards. D. A., did you forget your history? I haven’t and I am sure many readers have not either.

D. A., I did notice with your last comment that you have an extreme fixation with Sarah Palin and she is not even running for a political office! I believe Joni Ernest’s opponent has been in Congress for four terms (eight years), and I live in the southwest corner of Iowa and I don’t know what he has done for the State of Iowa. Do you or the other readers know what he has done for the State of Iowa for the last eight years outside of his district? D. A., my questions to you are: how many times has Joni’s opponent voted to raise the federal debt limit while in Congress? How many times has Joni’s opponent voted not to raise the federal debt limit while in Congress? My guess to the second question is a big fat Zero! If you have the facts, let us know.

D. A., you need to stop your fixation on Sarah and focus on the more crucial issues facing our state and our country rather than being a broken record of criticism. Make a more positive input to the forthcoming November election. The State of Iowa needs to vote Joni Ernest to be our next U.S. Senator and help to unseat Mr. Harry Reid from his positions of horrible leadership in the senate. Our country must move forward and regain the respect of other nations and return to being the global leader of freedom that has been lost during Obama’s administration with the aid of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and yes, Hillary Clinton!

Novie White

Sidney