Encourage Congress to do right by country

If President Barack Obama fails, we all fail. As an 83-year-old, platinum-card Republican, I am appalled by intransigent members of Congress, whose seeming intent is to get re-elected rather than help solve our massive problems.

Here are some ways it was done before 24-hour news and nightly pundits:

Deficit spending for World War II and the full employment it brought ended the Depression. Deficit spending reached more than 120 percent of gross domestic product and was more than 100 percent for five years. Growth and prosperity followed.

Deficits partly dropped because Congress raised taxes. The top tax rate in World War II reached 94 percent and was more than 90 percent until 1963, when it was droppedto 77 percent, on the novel theory that you tax those with money. Even Warren Buffett says it's not fair for his effective tax rate to be lower than his secretary's.

Required reading for economists is Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." He also wrote that if wars were paid for every year by a separate "war tax," then we would have fewer or shorter wars.

Solutions from pundits, such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, involve tactics that create fear based on distortions and obstructionism. Fox News' Roger Ailes said, "They are just entertainers, and their edginess raises ratings" -- and fattens Fox's wallet.

Could solutions possibly be encouraging a Congress that compromises, raises taxes and caps spending? I'm not an Obama hugger or socialist, just an old America-first Republican.

Mac McCoy

Bluffton