Can just a few elections for members of Congress tell what “The People” are thinking?
You can bet on that! Recent elections in just a few Congressional Elections across the country seem to be saying the same thing – “The People” are fed-up!
With a country in debt, as America is, Senior Citizens are concerned about their S.S. (Social Security) checks today. Their children, the workers of today, are concerned about the funds being spent today and from where funds will come for their S.S. tomorrow.
Some Seniors whose present incomes are quite superior to their day-to-day needs, feel they should continue to receive the standard amount because they paid into the fund when they were working and should receive the same return from the fund as all other Seniors! Well, that sounds fair.
So lets talk about that fund. Some years ago (I think in the 80’s) we allowed the Congress to dip into the S.S. fund, leaving IOU’s in the bank which was sure to become a problem in the future. The future is now! Where are the funds? Why are today’s workers paying for Senior Citizen Social Security today? Why were those funds not replaced?
To seniors, the citizens who were earners in the 80’s, your checks today come from those IOU’s and your children (the workers of today) are making the payments. Where will their payments come from when they are seniors and the fund remains penniless? Is that what you want to do to your Children?
Somewhere in the middle of a problem’s discussion, there is a solution. In discussion is for seniors with reasonable means to accept lower payments in concert with reasonable needs and additional income. Many seniors aggressively disagree with that. They put their money in the fund when they were employed, and they should be allowed to collect as Senior Citizens. That sounds reasonable, but the answer is not that simple.
Seniors owe better to their Posterity. The Preamble to our Constitution claims, “WE, the People”, are concerned as much for our Posterity as for ourselves.
Members of Congress, read the Constitution, legislate in concert with it and make sure that congresses to follow will be tied to future financial issues in tune with these times, those in which they will govern and future Congresses. . Today’s payments into the fund must be sufficient and should not be tampered with. You can’t make changes when it’s too late. Today you must govern with the future in mind. Modern medicine has improved the quality and the length of life. That must be taken into consideration when the age to collect Social Security in the future is being considered. People live longer lives and are healthier in later life than Senior Citizens of today.
Health Care is a personal responsibility, but Congress should keep an eye on price and quality. There is an international health organization. In some countries health care is affordable and Americans that can afford a trip, go elsewhere for less expensive health care. I do not know what controls there are for adequate, much less good, care but some people do go out of country for health care that is not so expensive. That is their right! The Government’s responsibility for individual health care should be for those who cannot afford professional care and to be sure the care they do get is appropriate and affordable for the general public. Citizens of a free Republic have responsibility for themselves and their families. The more government take-over, the more power government has and the fewer personal freedoms citizens have. Government is all about power! In a free society, individuals must assume personal responsibility to remain free. The more control Americans can keep in their own hands, the less costly will it be. Socialized anything is taxable. Someone has to pay. How much of your earnings do you want to be taken for taxes? Or would you rather keep some and pay for your own needs? Our country is broke. It is borrowing to pay the debts of some who should be paying for their own needs. And our President wants more of your money to solve the problems he and the Congress have not been able to solve. When government pays the bill, the payment is greater!
When do Americans take back their own lives? When do Americans take back their own Country?
Somewhere in the middle of every disagreement there is a solution. America is facing unemployment such as we have not seen in a very long time. So far we are not seeing long lines in the streets. We can be thankful for that!
As can be seen in our daily newspapers, the People, blame Congress, Congress blames the President and the President blames Congress – to the point that this President has sent a bill to Congress with demands for its immediate passage.
Now is not the time for blame! And Now is not the time to make demands for quick solutions.
Writing the Law is the responsibility of members of Congress – BOTH HOUSES. It is the responsibility of the President to manage the results of that legislation. Congress passes a budget, the President should not spend more than is allocated to him! It is the President’s responsibility to manage within the parameters of that budget. It is the responsibility of Congress to make sure he spends within that budget.
The President has not performed his duty and Congress has not performed its duty. Consequently, our country is broke and the solution to that problem is not to introduce an expensive health care or jobs bill! Are there no inovative minds among the almost 700 politicians that are responsible for our country today???
Early in March this year, the GAO (Government Accountability Office) and the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) sent reports to the Congress dealing with duplicated spending. How about the threat to close the Post Office for lack of money? Just this week I heard Greta Van Susteren asking the same questions that I asked in May of this year.
Why are we talking about, and Congress voting on, a Balanced Budget? We have yet to hear anything from the House or Senate about cutting the duplicated spending identified in both of those reports. We have yet to hear from the August committee that will suggest cuts to balance our budget.
We have certainly not heard from the President on issues of the budget, except for a plan he laid out this week to spend $400B+ recovering lost jobs. No-one knows exactly what that plan proposes while an article in the New York Times by Motoko Rich suggests employers are not that confident it will do anything at all to improve a 9.5 percent unemployment problem.
Our present budget cannot be balanced. How in the world would we balance a budget while adding $400B to the spending and not pass an increase on Income Taxes (more dollars from the pay check that even now doesn’t spread very far to acquire needed purchases)?
This great country was once an important and respected Nation among Nations. Donald Trump asks why is it not so any more? Herman Cain claims if 10 percent is enough for God, 9 percent should be enough for the government. I’m not sure that even if Congress voted for a Balanced Budget that they could bring the national spending under a nine percent mark.
The House, the Senate and the President only know how to spend! How many people in this country heard the sad tale of our Patent Office this last week? An even sadder tale can be found in other agencies of our government that not only receive budget dollars, but payments for their services and still don’t make it! Both the House and Senate have Oversight Committees. What does either of them do to correct the situations?
So, I close with the same question on opening, why does the Congress even bother to waste time on voting for, or against, a balance budget? It costs more than $1M per day to open the Congressional Halls for a vote. Neither our President, nor Members of the House and Senate know if we even have that kind of money. Do any of them even know what a Balanced Budget is? Do they have the courage to suggest an increase in payroll taxes? Even if they did, are there enough individuals in the work force to pay the kind of taxes they are considering spending? Therefore, WHY DO WE BOTHER TO ASK THESE QUESTIONS???
How about if we just cut spending?
If your schools are not the best, Why not? What Will You Do About it?
If the teachers are not the best, what will You Do About That?
American parents are being bombarded with the accusation that our children do not have the best teachers and therefore our children are not getting the best education. Make no mistake, this is about control – control over what your children will, or won’t be taught and how they will, or won’t be taught. Remember the Texas schools at the beginning of this school year. Would the publisher of textbooks make these decisions, or the citizens, through their elected officials decide. The locals held out and they are still in charge of what and how their children are taught. These grave, and sudden concerns are based on how students answer tests. I believe, what our students have accomplished through the years, towards the advancement of society and technology is proof they have been learning. Application of information is a far greater indication of learning! Rather than looking at who gets the best grades on tests, let’s take a good look at the results. A student might memorize everything they are taught, but if he cannot apply the information to accomplishing something from that knowledge, what good is it?
Until the 1970′s schools were under the authority of States. Now there is a Secretary of Education in the Presidential Cabinet. There is nothing in the Constitution authorizing responsibility for schools to the Federal Government. They were the responsibility of a state and still should be. Federal dollars for local school districts are bribes to get your school district to do what a Federal Government decides – control! On top of that it is costly. Let’s say it costs your local school, under authority of a local board, $1,000 a year to educate students in ninth grade. Your State charges $10 to every household to cover that cost. Now the Federal government says, you must teach your children about Birth Control and they will pay $5 per child for your local school to teach that subject. Besides the $5 the Feds will send to your school district to teach the subject, there are costs for them to develop curriculum and a fiscal group to consider and pay that cost to schools. You have tripled the cost and lost control of the delivery (meaning the content of what is to be taught)!
So, save your schools and your money – tell your State to take back control – that means you! In NY there are local school boards made up of local people. Neighbors and parents of children who go to school with your children. They are intensely interested in the education of all our students.
I do not subscribe to the theory that our education system is not good. American children have the best education in the world! The so-called testing outcome is deliberately geared to total government, and soon maybe even world, control. The so-called testing has been superficial, at best, and deliberately intended to prove our teachers do not measure up. The testing deliberately overlooks the actual result of our systems. Measure the technical advancements made by our students as each generation moves up to the leadership of our country. It was not the troublemakers, stupid, undereducated or uneducated students that technologically advanced a society more in 250 years than in the 5,000 years before. The American way of life allows minds to be free. Only free thinkers can learn and produce. For the last six, to maybe eight, generations our students have accomplished much, and continue to do so. Our thinkers are free to continue thinking because they are well educated and free to use what they learn to further advance freedom and technology.
Lately the hue and cry centers on ‘Unions’. All of a sudden, the teachers are not so bad and the parents are not so bad either. So lets blame the unions! Why? If there is need for blame, lets put it in the right place – the Federal Government. Schools have, until recently, been under authority of the States. Let’s leave it there! The closer the control (government), the more responsive it can be to the user. The closer the control, the cheaper is the cost as well.
As a parent, and occasional substitute teacher, I experience the work put into preparation before classroom teaching. Good teachers leave explicit instruction, for the substitute and the students. Yes, students try to give the substitute a hard time, but good teachers prepare students for their absence. Believe me, a good teacher controls the class even when not in the same room, whether it be for a long term leave of absence or taking off for a single day. They do that through clear-cut curriculum standards as well as a clear-cut understanding of mutual respect.
At lunchtime, I observed teachers, eating as they got together to discuss helping particular students with problems. They also help each other with curriculum development and a myriad of other issues with which they must deal, some of which have nothing to do with educating your children. You would be surprised at how much junk is thrown at the teaching staff to care for that has nothing to do with the kind of education your child is getting!
Then there are the students who come to school to deliberately cause problems – they need the attention they don’t get at home. It is the teacher’s job to teach; now they must be loving parent as well.
Something we don’t hear in the discussions, the administration of our schools and classrooms. How shall we mark the adults, not just the teachers in each school district, not just the parents, all of the adults?
When my children had difficulties as they continued their education in various forms of advanced learning, I asked, “If I bought a refrigerator that didn’t work, what would I do? I would call the store and demand that they, or the manufacturer, fix it! Speak up, get it fixed!” If the education of your children is not working, what should you do about it? Why do you buy an education system that doesn’t work? You do buy your local education system with some form of taxation. Why do you not require good service? And, if you are getting good service, why do you sit in front of the television listening to the garbage spewing out about how bad your schools, and teachers, are? If your teachers are so bad, what will you do about it? If they are good let them and the administration know about it! The job of Unions is to assure management does not misuse workers. Members of the local union group can represent their fellow workers.
There is really no need for a National, or anything larger than the local business and people involved. Union Members have allowed their leadership to get out of their control. Does a larger union actually get you better served? Do your teachers really need someone in the White House to speak for them against you (you are the employer)? No! It costs you more money-so why?
There is no secret about it – Our Country is BROKE! OUT OF MONEY! Worse than that – each one of us (children as well – owes $60,000 per year and that is only to pay the cost of having borrowed the money.
Members of congress like to remind us that 40 cents of every dollar we collect only pays the cost of that debt. So, if you know this, members of congress, when do you stop adding to the debt?
The Government Accountability Office has been telling our representatives this sad story for years. Additionally, they have been advising the congress where dollars can be cut – dollars that will only hurt those departments, within our government that pay for duplicated services.
The congressional solution has been – borrow more money! That is insane!
No, insanity means one does not know any better. However, members of congress should know better! Therefore, the word is either stupid or criminal!
I choose criminal! Ask yourself! Where in the Constitution of the United States do “We,” the people give members of Congress the right to indebt us so gravely that our Grand Children will foot the bill?
Where is it in the Constitution of the United States that the Supreme Court was given permission to take their time in deciding when a bill passed by Congress is unconstitutional. When a question dealing with a bill, recently passed by Congress, and signed by the President comes before them, that bill should immediately take precedence over all other questions. Such questions should be seen as requiring immediate decisions! While the court dilly dallies, the bill is being implemented. Money the country does not have to throw away is being thrown away!
According to Michele Bachman, more than $105B has been secretly allocated by the White House for Obamacare implementation. Where, in the Constitution does the President get the authority to spend money without a Congressional bill? While all of these questions pass through the courts, States pass Nullification bills against the same question. Everyone of these actions cost grave amounts of dollars in legal fees alone, dollars we no longer have. How much longer will we allow our representatives, and the employees they hire, to unscrupulously indebt our country before we say, WHEN?
How about the stimulus dollars, borrowed from China, some of which is being used to establish a Wind Farm in Texas that will purchase Chinese windmills and erect them in Texas with Chinese labor. How does that put Americans to work? Why did the bill not include that every stimulus dollar must be spent IN the United States and must provide jobs for American Citizens?
Now we are involved in a “No Fly Zone” operation in Libya (but not a war – it costs the same no matter what you call it). Congressman Kucinich tells us our involvement in the Libya quagmire is illegal. Only the Congress can declare War – yet the DoD (Department of Defense) has our men and women on the lines. I know we are told, this is not a war and our troops are not in battle, but those were big missiles fired from our Navy. Those missiles are not penny gumballs. And why would you use missiles if there is no battle?
Once again we are discussing if our Military should be led by a non-American command structure. We had that discussion during Vietnam. The answer was undoubtedly NO! Nor do our military personnel wear the uniform of any other country! They also do not wear a United Nations uniform. This is a money issue as well as any other issues in this article.
So, I ask – our country is out of money, our military is in a war (call it what you may), money we borrowed from China is being used to build a Wind Farm in Texas with Chinese workers. Our President was in Brazil spending billions to assure we have oil, and I ask why? Why are we not opening the gulf wells that were closed after the BP spill? We have more than enough oil right here in the United States – I think we can call some of it – Alaskan oil!
But Congress is not to blame, they were home on vacation. THAT was the most criminal act of all. While any of our troops are on a battle field, no-one in D.C. holding an office, or position in the Federal Government, should be out of D.C.! They should be on duty day and night, as are our military. All should remain in DC, everyone of them. Demand the President remain there as well. Demand the Supreme Court do their job and oh, yes, I forgot the Vice President. Obama assigns him to deal with Congress and the budget and what does he do? Biden goes to Russia?
