
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990                   TAG: 9005290202
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GOVERNMENTAL WASTE EVERYWHERE

PAXTON DAVIS' article on taxes May 11 states that national and local needs of all sorts are becoming crucial and that increased military spending is creating "unprecedented budget deficits resulting in an intolerably burdensome national debt. A refusal to raise taxes," he says, "has brought on a condition of national paralysis . . . These are problems that only tax money can even begin to solve."

In the Wall Street Journal of May 10, Alan Keyes wrote: "The notion that deficits are caused by low taxes is a complete falsehood . . . We have chronic deficits because, while income tax revenues have grown by 8 percent a year during the past decade, Congress has increased spending by 11 percent a year."

"Problems that only tax money can solve"? In the same WSJ article, Keyes quotes Charles A. Browsher, head of the General Accounting Office, who estimated in January that "The federal government squanders $180 billion of the taxpayers' money each year through waste, fraud and mismanagement."

"Problems that only tax money can solve"? Keyes inquires, "Just where is the waste? Perhaps a more appropriate question is, Where isn't it? In November 1989 the GAO reported that 17 major federal agencies had `material weaknesses' in financial management and internal control systems that `cost taxpayers billions of dollars' every year. Specific losses cited by the GAO include: $6 billion at the Export Import Bank; $12 billion at the Commodity Credit Corporation; $10-$20 billion in foreign military sales; and $4 billion at the Department of Veterans Affairs."

"Problems that only tax money can even begin to solve"? JOSEPH A. McDONALD ROANOKE

by CNB