Letter: National debt has increased under current administration

To the editor, Our national debt has gone up to $40 trillion, or 130% of our GDP. Of course, this is not sustainable; but why is all the talk about the size of the cuts we'll have to make to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps) etc.? Why aren't we hearing more about, what I think, are the principal reasons for this debacle? I would like to bring up the billionaires tax cut that was supposed to 'pay for itself' in Trump's first term. Then I'll add Trump's 'big beautiful bill' that was the permanent extension of the billionaires tax cut of his first term. The Republicans just can't seem to quit giving away our hard earned money as tax cut gifts to their rich donors. Then we have Trump blundering into yet another expensive, unnecessary quagmire in the Middle East that benefits nobody. He and his enablers should hang their heads in shame. I've saved the dumbest thing for last, and that would be the immigration fiasco. It's morphed from closing the border, which might be okay, into something that resembles ethnic cleansing. We spend tens of billions of dollars rounding up non-white, mostly hispanic, people who may or may not have entered the U.S. illegally and we're deporting them. We should consider that every person we deport stops paying taxes, buying groceries, paying rent, etc. etc. Furthermore, if we want to maintain a growing, and prosperous country, we need more law abiding, willing, workers. We need a path to citizenship for many of the people ICE gets its hands on. We have fallen into an 'us versus them' style of government, and it's not working. We have to start sending politicians to Washington who are committed to common sense governance, and are willing to put country over party. The Constitution lays out what's expected of them, and they take an oath to do it. If we pick responsible people to represent us, fiscal responsibility will return. Tom Osowski Minto, North Dakota