Desperation Nation

   Poor people do it too, using tax loopholes to avoid paying income taxes, said Donald Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani in a desperate attempt to defend his candidate over a report that Trump claimed a $916 million loss in 1995, and thus has likely been able to carry the loss forward and pay no federal income taxes for as long as 18 years.
   The New York Times led its Sunday edition with the investigative report, noting that such a tactic is legal, using the losses from "the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s," including mismanagement of casinos in Atlantic City, a failed airline, and the losses incurred in what the newspaper called "his ill timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan."
   During the presidential debate with Hillary Clinton Monday evening, Trump said that using loopholes and not paying income taxes "makes me smart."
   He has consistently refused to release his tax returns, claiming they are under audit, and therefore he cannot. The Internal Revenue Service has pointed out that anyone is free to divulge this information at any time. Every presidential candidate since the Nixon era has released his or her tax information.
   Clinton challenged Trump on the issue during the debate, asking, "What are you hiding?"
   
   It is true that low-income people, and many moderate income households, pay little or no federal taxes, but that's largely because their income levels are not high enough to be taxable. Loopholes and manipulation of the tax code rules, to the extent of claiming nearly a billion dollars in losses, while legal, would be of no use to them.
   Trump has proposed a child care deduction in the tax code, but that would be of little use to lower income households, since they generally can't afford to hire people for child care to begin with.
   
   So while Trump endorses the idea of avoiding taxes, he also calls for additional federal government spending to improve and maintain the nation's highways and bridges.
   Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Trump supporter, has finally agreed to an increase in that state's gasoline tax to help pay for improvements to the state-owned railroad system. This came two days after a commuter train failed to stop as it entered Hoboken, crashing into the terminal and taking the life of a young mother standing on the platform and injuring more than 100 passengers.
   
  You can't have it both ways, guys. Taxes are the government's primary source of revenue, and you can't spend what you don't have.
   Encouraging the avoidance of paying taxes, and reducing taxation while increasing spending is a recipe for financial disaster, if not government bankruptcy.
   Can you say "hypocrisy"? Or it may be that those who espouse such policies just don't care about the general public, but only about their own pockets.