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Letter: Lee could learn from the courage of firefighters

(Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call) Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, attends a markup of the Senate Judiciary Committee in Dirksen Building on September 13, 2018, where Republicans voted to move the committee vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to September 20.

Sen. Mike Lee,

I am so glad you and you paper tiger comrade, Sen. Rand Paul, have decided to fight against our ballooning budget deficit. However, I am baffled by the battles you have chosen to fight.

Rather than engaging the enemy during the debate over the $2.3 trillion tax cut, you have chosen to fight against funding for the 9/11 compensation fund.

You defended this roadblock to the funding because the 9/11 Victims Fund needs to have finite authorizations to prevent abuse and fraud. I agree that preventing the loss of taxpayer dollars through fraud is an important endeavor, but I am wondering why you are focusing on the 9/11 fund which has had no instances of fraud or misuse and in terms of actual dollar value is relatively low hanging fruit to go after.

If you are looking for areas to put up a noble battle against fraud, I suggest you look at the budget for the Department of Defense. Perhaps it has escaped your attention that most divisions within the DOD failed an audit and were unable to account for billions in taxpayer dollars.

If you want to be a fiscal discipline warrior, perhaps you and Rand could focus your efforts in places where you could make a real difference, rather than balancing the budget at the expense of firefighters, police and other first responders who ran toward danger instead of away from it.

You both could learn a lot about courage from their example.

David Vala, Taylorsville

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