When I was selling properties and businesses, the buyers would have to submit a business plan to get a loan. They were always optimistic to extremely optimistic on increased revenue and net profits. The increase was seldom realized because the economic conditions didn’t change and expenses couldn’t be cut enough to justify the expected increase in net.

Those experiences remind me of the tax proposal reforms being pushed in Congress and by the President’s men. About six months ago Trump said he wanted all economic reports to show 1% more than the actual G.D.P. and projections. If the reform is based on losing 150 billion each year and the projection is based on hot air, then we are in more trouble.

When an economy that is as big as ours jumps to 3%; that’s huge. In today’s world of offshore cheap labor and robotics being introduced in those same industrial areas, big G.D.P. jumps in only one country and not others would be very unusual.

I am afraid with the proposed tax cuts, keeping the yearly deficit under one trillion will be impossible. I had hoped the reform would cut our deficit and pay down the 20 trillion debt.

Billionaires live off ever increasing debt and the administration’s finance people used loans as a way for them to get rich and then bail on loans. Countries like ours can’t bail so we must raise taxes or brutally slash expenses like social programs conservatives don’t like. This includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax cuts are not what we need at this time. We need the debt paid down before interest rates on it raise, causing more debt. The same applies to Illinois’ debt. We can’t keep kicking the can down the track because there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

I read a letter to the editor in the Tribune’s September 29th paper from a proponent of the tax cut for rich and corporations. I don’t think he has ever work with the top 1%. I have and it doesn’t matter what their tax rate is. Every one of them saw cutting employees or reducing salaries, or cutting pensions and perks as steps in putting more money in their own pockets.

One multi-millionaire I liked very much. We ate several meals on his tab. He talked about how good he was to “his people” by keeping them working. When I looked through his finances I saw the net revenue had increased, the employee expenses had been slashed, and his income had grown by the difference.

Ryan may say “CEOs are making enough” but as the title of the Bond movie says ” The World Is Not Enough.” In the 1970s, CEOs made 14 times the salary of their average employee. Today, the ratio may be 100 to 200 to 1. They have been praised and given outrageous salaries because they cut expenses (meaning jobs or raiding pension plans).

If anyone thinks “Trickle Down Economics” works, they should remember what Bush I correctly called it, “Voodoo Economics.” He was right! Tax cuts don’t reduce greed; it increases it. By the Koch Brothers putting an aide in almost every Republican Senator’s and Representative’s office means tax reforms are for the top few, as Warren Buffet said some years ago and I seldom disagree with him.