First off, kudos to Henry Broge for standing up as a proud liberal!

Secondly, let’s apply a little critical thinking to one statement in a prior week’s letter to the editor:

“Obama increased national debt by over $7 trillion, burdening our children and grandchildren with this debt for decades to come.”

Let’s examine this statement more closely. The $7 trillion includes the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, which consisted of Bush’s approved budget with a deficit of $1.2 trillion (result of tax cuts, wars and recession) and Obama’s $200 billion stimulus (result of recession).

Under current law the deficit will decrease to $492 billion in 2014 per the Congressional Budget Office. In other words, under Obama’s presidency the current year’s deficit is around a third of what he inherited.

And as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, 2014’s deficit will be the lowest deficit since 2007. Additionally, the percentage of GDP drop from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 2.8 percent in 2014 is the largest reduction in the federal deficit since the end of World War II.

A critical thinker would examine history and conclude that Obama inherited a challenging federal deficit/debt situation in a recession and that significant progress has occurred to reduce the federal deficit since.

This in no way implies that our deficit/debt situation is now solved as any amount of deficit still adds to the debt.

Where do we fit in? Research to understand how we got where we are regarding federal deficit/debt, appreciate the recent progress that has been made, recognize that further progress still needs to occur…and encourage our lawmakers to work together to find common ground ways to continue to trim the federal budget.