SEEING RED OVER RED INK

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

DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992                   TAG: 9202210479
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOHNNY ANGELL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
SEEING RED OVER RED INK
THIS IS SOMETHING that has been on my mind a long time; it concerns the budget deficit, honesty, and the way it really is as a poor farmer sees it.
How can we, as Americans, allow the federal government to fund everything from A to Z with red ink? Why are so many willing to cheat on taxes or try to get more government benefits and services than the government can afford to pay for?
I guess a lot of people would justify it by saying that it's only a drop in the bucket. Well, those drops have turned into an ocean of red ink.
Hundreds of years ago, why wasn't a constitutional amendment passed that would allow the government to spend in this fiscal year only the funds that were collected in the last? Instead of guessing what the income for the current fiscal year would be, the money would have been collected last fiscal year and be in the bank drawing interest. Instead of federal debt measured in trillions of dollars, the government could have had trillions of dollars on hand drawing interest.
As a grade-schooler, I remember a speech by JFK in which he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." I think it's everyone's patriotic duty to pay taxes and not demand services and benefits that the government would have to pay for with borrowed money.
I also think that we must demand fiscal accountability from elected officials. The very economic survival of our country depends upon it.
I guess the supply-side economists will think I'm crazy. I'm just a simple country boy who has been married to my wife for 18 years, and we don't have any children simply because we can't afford them.
My wife and I live in a shack that the health department probably could condemn, but I'd rather die a poor man than acquire wealth at the expense of my country or my fellow Americans.

Johnny Angell is a tobacco farmer in Franklin County.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB