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Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Administration raises whiie vlag on spending - By Richard B. Lesher, Pres., Chamber of Commerce of the United Stales ' If you wished to help a friend with his diet, would you make him the following offer: If you gain 10 pounds or more in the next month, I will take you out for a big dinner and dessert? Of course not. Or if your son were constantly overspending his weekly allowance, would you solve the problem with the following ultimatum? Son, if you overspend overs-pend your allowance" again this week, I will be forced to raise it. Certainly not. One doesn't get discipline for appetites or personal budgets by rewarding excess. No one would seriously act like the two examples ex-amples mentioned above. Well, if you think these two examples are silly, hold onto your hats (and your pocketbooks) because our federal government has just proposed something just as silly but a great deal more expensive. The federal government has a problem it assures us that it is trying to solve: runaway spending. The 1983 budget is $805 billion. This is up $77 billion from last year's budget, which was $71 billion higher than the year before, which was $80 billion above the year before that. And so on. By anyone's reckoning, the federal government's spending is out of control and headed for disaster. . To solve the problem, the Reagan administration ad-ministration has decided to get tough. The President told Congress in the State of the Union address that if they continue their tax and spend policies of the past and the deficit continues to remain over 2.5 percent of the gross national product in 1985, then he will. ..raise taxes. Some punishment. The President calls this a "trigger tax" or a "stand-by tax." It should be called the white flag of surrender in the battle to control federal spending. Our President is telling Congress: If you continue to spend billions billions of the taxpayers' money, E continue to create rivers V ink. . .Then we will give you more: to spend. Now, who is being silly? - You don't help an alcoholic byf, him a bottle of scotch because hex: drink it. And you don't give the polilie Washington more money-becaiK. - will spend jt-.. And more:, . The only way to keep the bums and politicans from spending our i is to keep it out of their greedy, hands in the first place. We must force Congress to m- grips with the real problems-tat. money being spent by Washington . as a result, not enough being spaa k people. ) But we cannot do this by ste. them with more of the taxpayers'!.: any more than we can put out a fi-: pouring gasoline on it. |