Our nation can achieve its financial independence

With Independence Day ahead, this is an ideal time to contemplate the true meaning of personal independence. How about living within one's means and having no unmanageable debt? Easier said than done, but we have a tried and true blueprint: The deficit reduction plan enacted Aug. 10, 1993, without a single Republican vote!

The economic plan established fiscal discipline by slashing the deficit in half while making important investments in our economic future, including education, health care, research in science and technology and various other areas.

Other investments approved by Congress in 1993 were the Earned Income Tax Credit expansion, which helped millions of working families, and student loan reform, saving taxpayers billions of dollars while allowing interest rate reductions for students. The legislation extended the Medicare trust fund by three years.

President Clinton kept his promise to end welfare as we know it by requiring welfare recipients to work, limiting the time they can stay on welfare, and providing child care and health care to help them make the move from welfare to work. The landmark bipartisan welfare reform law signed by Mr. Clinton also enacted tough new child support enforcement measures.

This economic plan coupled with restrictions and incentives actually worked. The fiscal discipline established by the Clinton-Gore administration turned the largest deficit at that point in our country's history into the largest surplus.

So here's the proposal. Let us all be independent voters and do right by our nation. We can defeat the deficit and secure our country's independence from our creditors. It will take time and determination.

Happy Independence Day, fellow citizens! It is our patriotic duty to heed this call.

AGNES DODDS KINARD
Plum