Can't these liberals ever get anything right?

I surrender. Liberalism must be viral since there is no known cure. I tried (letter, May 14) in the simplest terms to explain the difference between an increase and a cut as regards Medicare and the budget. My main point was the dishonesty of the debate.

Joe Fulfs (letter, May 21), in criticizing me once again, missed the point.
He doesn't dispute that spending 7 percent more is an increase. He uses the other favorite fallacious argument of the left. Yes, they are increases, but not big enough increases because of the zillions of new people coming into the programs.

Do people only come into these programs and never leave? There must be billions of people on these programs because apparently no one ever dies, graduates from school, or ever goes off the poverty rolls.

In fact, between 1980 and 1990, while the state's budget for public education went from $ 1 billion to more than $ 3 billion, the number of students declined by 100,000.

Fact: between 1990 and 1993 the number of children on the school lunch program increased from 24.6 million to 25.3 million, an increase of .03 percent, while spending on the program increased 26.7 percent (Source: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture).

Fact: the school lunch program feeds more than twice as many children as are living in poverty according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Tony Moschetti
High Point

News & Record
June 17, 1995