r act: (I borrow Mr. Sweet s tactic here.)

act: (I borrow Mr. Sweet s tactic here.) While Social Security and Medical Health Insurance (Medicare) have been, since their inception, fully funded (by taxes levied disproportionately on low and middle income taxpayers), the defense buildup since 1980 has never been.

Comment: I have recently renewed the insurance policy on my house. I paid the premium in full. If defense is such a valuable insurance, why doesn’t the President ask us to pay its full cost? Read my lips, Mr. Sweet.

Fact: Under the heading “Fact,” Mr. Sweet states: “Defense spending under President Carter was cut back so drastically that our military and intelligence services could not do their job properly. As a direct result, the Soviet Union seized control in 10 more countries, including Afganistan, knowing the U.S. was too weak to respond.” It is a fact, I submit, that Mr. Sweet’s alleged fact is not a fact.

Comment: The quotation is an opinion. And I suggest, a wrong one. There is no evidence to show that larger defense expenditures in the 1970’s would have prevented the U.S.S.R., a “superpower,” from invading Afghanistan or any other country. Indeed, all our megabillions of defense expenditures in the 1980’s did not prevent Iraq, a country substantially less than a superpower, from invading Kuwait last August. That is a fact.

Facts: The national debt has exploded from $908 billion in fiscal 1980 to an estimated $3.1 trillion in fiscal 1990, much of the increase due to the Reagan defense builup. The debt grows at a rate of $4,000 a second. By present calculations, this year’s deficit will come close to $300 billion, if we include the billions required this year by the S & L bailout. At least two of President Bush’s five children, Neil and Jeb, have had their hands in that cookie jar.

Comment: None.

Facts: Some of the cost elements of the defense buildup are, according