The Sun's op-ed article by Mitch McConnell ("Difficult choices await on spending, debt," June 15) is a perfect example of the way the Republicans still don't "get it" in regards to our national debt, what caused it, and how to get out of it. It doesn't take long to realize that either. In his very first sentence, he repeats the Republican lie that raising taxes on the rich we will somehow "kill jobs." Obviously, the Republicans still subscribe to the "big lie" theory that if you keep telling a lie big enough and repeat it often enough, the gullible public will start to believe it.

Actually, the last few centuries of human existence, and in particular America's experience since World War II, show us that exactly the opposite is true. Growth and prosperity are both greatest when tax rates on the rich are high, and they start to decline immediately when tax rates for the rich are lowered. If the Republican position were true, the Bush tax cuts would have produced a flood of growth, balanced budgets and a rising standard of living for everyone. In fact, it has produced exactly the opposite as anyone with a degree in economics could have told you.

It took only eight years of Republican voodoo economics to turn America from a prosperous nation with balanced budgets into a crippled, stumbling economy that resembles a Third World banana republic. President Obama has done a great job at undoing much of that harm, but it will take years before we finally climb out of the hole the Republicans have dug for us. Now is certainly not the time to shut our eyes and dive headfirst back into that same hole. Our future as a free nation is hanging by a thread already. Suicide should not be an option.

William Smith, Baltimore