I read on cleveland.com today that you voted for the senate bill that provided the 800 billion dollar increase in the federal debt ceiling. I am extremely disappointed that you, a senator who has made a career out of fiscal moderation and paying for what our government does, should allow yourself to be strongarmed by irresponsible spendthrifts in Congress.
George Bush is promising tax cuts, which are great, but if he is going to reduce government revenues then he needs to reduce government spending, and the only way that can happen is if Senators like you send him a clear message that he must pay somehow for all the things that he wants.
These huge deficits that Congress and the President are running up are not economically sensible. Bush's tax cut policy may provide an economic incentive, but when he doesn't cut spending to match, it makes people like me nervous -- becoming a significant debtor nation is only going to weaken the dollar internationally, which hurts our economy. The economic benefits of the tax cut will only become permanent if they are not offset by the economic harm that continually running shoddy financial books causes.
We need only ask the Germans of the 30s what happens when a government's solution to money problems is to simply run off more money. A balanced budget is more important to economic growth than tax cuts, and I would hope that's something Senators on both sides of the aisle can agree with, regardless of party affiliation. I look to you as a champion of fiscal moderation, and you have let me down.
Sincerely,
Vanya
I am writing to entreat you to join with your Senatorial colleagues to vote against this so-called intelligence reform bill. Proponents of this bill can trot out weeping 9/11 families all they want, but the blunt point is that their loved ones are already dead; we can do nothing more to help them. The bill that you are being encouraged to pass contains many dangerous invasion-of-privacy provisions which will hurt America far more than they help it.
The goal of Osama bin Laden and his gang of criminals in attacking America was to bring down American society. They have so far failed to do so. They don't need to. If they sit back and wait long enough, we will tear down our constitution ourselves. People are crying out for security, but as a Senator you must rise above that and realize that our personal liberties are more important.
Should you fail in the fight, and this atrocious law is passed anyway, I implore you to at least make sure that the National ID provisions are stripped out of it. Implementing this system is the first step towards forcing Arab-Americans to wear fabric crescents, or Jewish-Americans to wear fabric stars of David, or really of forcing any "suspect" group to be ID'ed and tracked when they haven't done anything wrong. Let us remember that none of the 9/11 hijackers had American citizenship. How does letting the government track American citizens help us fight foreign terrorists?
Thank you for your continued efforts to preserve our freedom,
Vanya