Dear editor:

I read Monday’s editorial in the Niles Daily Star very carefully because it initially appeared to be a serious editorial about the lack of cooperation across the political aisles in Congress.  As I read the editorial, I noticed that it listed one example of Republican bad behavior after another and not a single example of Democrat bad behavior.  Then I burst out laughing at the end when I read, “Honest debate can be civil, neither side has a monopoly on the truth and not everyone across the aisle is evil.”

It’s of interest to me that the editorial highlighted the recent televised Baltimore conference on health care.  Shouldn’t the editorial also have mentioned that the televised conference happened only because President Obama had promised before he was elected that the debates on health care would be open and televised?  Instead, the process of producing the health care bill in the Senate was conducted behind locked and guarded doors and included outrageous political deals to Louisiana, Florida and Nebraska.  Until that conference, the Democrats had refused to listen to substantive Republican ideas concerning health care. That’s one example of bad behavior by Democrats.

I should add that 75 percent of Americans do not favor the president’s health care plan, and most want the Congress to start over concerning health care. I realize that Democrats don’t want to hear the following but Republicans at least partly won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey and the senate seat in Massachusetts because Americans have become distrustful of Democrats and their spending policies including their health care proposal.

Our biggest problem now is not health care or even unemployment.  It’s our exploding public debt.  If the dollar becomes so weak that we can longer afford to buy Japanese or Chinese goods or imported oil and inflation reaches levels last seen under Jimmy Carter, all the other current issues pushed by Democrats or Republicans will seem very minor.  The first political party that puts forward a plan to bring debt under control will get my vote next fall.

Michael L. Waldron
Niles