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To the editor:
In the past several weeks, there has been a discussion of several domestic political issues in your letters column. I would like to comment further on some of these issues.
While the budget deficit is the result of many factors, the principal cause was the Reagan tax cuts, which won broad support in the Congress on both sides of the aisle. It now appears that they were improvident, especially when coupled with substantial increases in defense spending.
Defense spending had been at a level of about $100 billion a year under Mr. Carter in 1979 and 1980, but that figure was threbled in the eighties. For most of the eighties, defense expenditures remained at a level just under $300 billion, adding about 200 billion to the national budget each year.
During the same years, Social Security and related health entitlements rose .until, in 1988, the estimated outlays for these purposes totaled $308.2 billion. However, during the same year, the estimated receipts from taxes levied especially for the Trust Funds concerned totaled $360.0 billion. Likewise, in all the years since 1980, these Trust Funds receipts have substantially exceeded outlays. (Statistical Abstract of hte U.S., 1989, U.S. Dept, of Commerce.)
On these facts, it appears that
95.2%