I would like to respond to Jim Fossel’s March 7 column, “Don’t use federal aid to grow state government” (Page D1).

Mr. Fossel summarizes his argument by stating “that Janet Mills’ first biennial budget was unsustainable,” yet he provides no explanation or evidence for this statement. He further asserts that “it will be up to Republicans in Augusta to make sure that any new federal money doesn’t enable” increased Democratic spending or the creation of new programs.

Inherent in his argument is that increases in spending, by definition, are wasteful and superfluous. This drives me crazy. Without even assessing a proposed program’s payback for Maine citizens, Mr. Fossel apparently knows that it’s unnecessary and needs to be avoided. What if a new program eliminated hunger in Maine, dramatically increased educational performance in Maine schools, brought internet to underserved communities, fixed crumbling infrastructure or retrained the unemployed to be productive, taxpaying workers?

The Republican mantra that government is bad and taxes need to be lowered at all cost is astonishingly close-minded. They slashed spending at the Internal Revenue Service, even though each incremental dollar invested would have returned more than a dollar of new taxes. To save money, then-Gov. Paul LePage refused to staff the Maine Public Health Nursing Program, leaving Maine woefully unprepared for a virus pandemic.

The examples of their shortsightedness are plentiful. They’ll happily cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, but rarely are willing to entertain spending to help the suffering or invest in our state’s future. Ugh!

Andy Wright
Falmouth