Your editorial "GOP plays chicken" (June 5) shows a lamentable lack of familiarity with the concept of "playing chicken." It takes two to engage in this pastime.
Your editorial should have been titled "Democrats and GOP play chicken," because that is what is happening. The two groups have opposite aims: Democrats want to continue the spending spree, and Republicans want to curb it.
The Democrats have not put forth a budget for two years, and they have spent trillions of dollars that the country does not have. The Republican-controlled House controls the purse strings and wants to limit expenditures.
Although we actually hit the debt limit some time during May, the Democrats have finagled expenditures so this contest can continue for three more months. Republicans are concerned that raising the debt limit without cutting expenditures will cause the United States to follow Greece, Ireland and Spain, which would cause cataclysmic monetary problems.
The Democrats know this, but they represent a failure to raise the debt ceiling as a terrible and insoluble financial problem. They both have a point, but the game goes on.
Both sides know that the consequences of failing to raise the debt limit, while serious, could be worked out with some complicated dealings with our creditors. Both sides know that the financial collapse which would result from having the United States' credit spoiled by continued insane spending and borrowing would be far worse.
The GOP has only one card to play — the debt limit. The Democrats know this, and by exaggerating the problems that failure to raise the debt might cause, they claim the GOP are obstructionists. By ignoring the greater problem of massive and increasing debt, the Dems have convinced many Americans that their approach is the best one.
The appropriate and sensible solution is an agreement which would significantly reduce the overspending in 2012, with further cuts in later years, Nothing less than $1 to $1.5 trillion in cuts would be required. The debt limit would be raised by an amount which would recognize this reduction in spending.
Such a compromise with a debt ceiling increase to about $15.2 trillion would be a big step in the right direction.
Ed Boyle