Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I received an announcement from Representative Wittman’s office on March 28 lamenting the “root cause of our (U.S.) spending problems.”

I will rephrase his complaint thusly: Congress operates under a wildly different framework than we do with our individual budgets and it is something he (Wittman) is fighting to change.

I agree it is not how we taxpayers do our household budgets and I argue that historically he has not fought to change the process as evidenced by his votes in 2017 and 2018.

As I have said in previous letters in the Gazette-Journal, the root cause of our increasing deficit and “a wild congressional budget framework” were best represented by recent actions taken by the Republican Congress. Representative Wittman voted for and the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 6760 that increased the national deficit by $631 billion through 2029. This was in addition to the $2.3 trillion increase in the deficit passed via the “2017 Tax Bill” and the “2018 Appropriations Bill” bringing the total increases in the national debt in 2018 alone to nearly 3 trillion ($3,000,000,000,000) dollars. 

Rather than lamenting the chaos in Congress, in my opinion, Representative Wittman should pledge to work across the aisle and participate in discussions that support the interests of his constituents.

Phil Olekszyk

Gloucester, Va.