Budget talks draw Eastern Iowa interest

I haven't updated my blog for a couple of weeks because of summer vacation. No one likes to hear about someone else's vacation, so I'll spare you.

My Sunday, July 24, column in The Gazette deals with a few readers who have commented on the budget ceiling negotiations in Washington, D.C. We ran a front page information graphic from the Washington Post news service to which we subscribe in the Tuesday, July 19, Gazette that broke down where the debt is owed. Its headline was, “USA's IOU”.

One reader left me a voice message, saying she wanted the other side of the story printed. That side, she said, was that revenue is too low and that an increase in taxes is necessary to raise revenue to acceptable levels. I talked with another caller with a similar point of view, although he appreciated the graphic.

Still another caller, however, wanted The Gazette to write an editorial that points out that Democrats have not proved the need to raise taxes in order to get the budget in shape. We should call them out for their unwillingness to cut spending, the caller urged.

The Gazette Opinion Page carried an editorial July 9 that called on Democrats and Republicans in Washington to reach an agreement that cuts federal spending and reduce the nation's debt. You can read it here.

Agreement remained elusive the weekend of July 23-24, when this blog post was written. The Democratic-led Senate's rejection on Friday of a Republican-led House budget proposal blew the controversy into the weekend for more talks.

The point I am making in the column is that The Gazette's primary focus is local and regional news and that, because of this focus, we don't devote as much space to national and world news as we do to local and regional news. But news of local interest is not always defined by a dateline. Eastern Iowans care about how the U.S. government spends our money, making this story locally relevant enough to prompt people to comment.