Conservatives are proud of their successes in tax cutting. However, tax cuts mean nothing when federal spending is not cut at the same time. When you cut taxes and increase spending, as have Mr. Bush and the current Congress, the only result can be the exploding federal deficit and higher inflation rates we are beginning to see. Congress in 2005 has voted for largest federal budget deficit in the last fifty years at some $500 billion.

The only way the federal government can cover growing expenses with shrinking federal revenues is by printing more money and that directly causes inflation. And, fasten your safety belt folks, because inflation is set to explode after the November election. Higher inflation rates are cruelest kind of hidden tax, the kind Congress likes. They get to claim legislative victories. However, what their tax cuts give, tax bracket creep caused by inflation takes away. They're really given you nothing at all.

Moreover, the only tool the government has against inflation is higher interest rates, and those are growing now. But, wait until October. Higher interest rates are already killing the housing market, will drive up your credit card payments, mortgage payments, tuition payments, and they will substantially slow economic expansion.

In October please take out your wallet and open it and then decide how to vote. President Bush and conservatives in Congress like Mr. Cox have delivered its contents to you. You decide if you’re better off with their leadership in Washington.

President Clinton had his faults. But, one of them was not fiscal irresponsibility. He reduced spending on the military during the early 1990s and that freed up money to invest in the private sector. His plan produced the first federal budget surpluses in the last fifty years beginning in 1998. Remarkable. It’s again time to reduce the bloated defense budget. The threat of major wars involving large armies and navies and nuclear weapons ended with the Cold War in 1990. Now we face terrorist zealots with box cutters. What we need to fight terrorism is excellent police, intelligence officers, and firefighters. Not new fighter aircraft programs or nuclear submarines.