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I’m sure there are those that are thinking that I’ve put my Republican hat on and am about to trash the President, again! Can’t I ever say anything positive?! OK, here’s something positive, elections are 15 months away and then we CAN AND WILL vote out the incumbents and elect new representatives of the people including the President!!
I hadn’t written about this debt crisis during the past week because frankly I was sick and tired of all the so called experts that were spewing their “knowledge”. I was also tired of turning on the TV or radio for a statement from the President, only to hear him say nothing. He didn’t cite specifics he wanted from Congress, except that he didn’t want to deal with this issue again until after the next election. The President didn’t list specific proposals he had put forward, he didn’t even give a Pep Talk to the nation (the entire nation). All he did was (for lack of a better description) was give campaign speeches!
I am not writing this as a staunch Republican, or a Tea Party member (I am not). This is a voter that is fed up with the status quo, and also angry at what I witnessed over the past week and a half (of course another word comes to mind to describe my anger)! I am fed up and angry with the status quo, scare the hell out of the elderly and threaten not to pay the military and put the country’s safety in jeopardy.
You say during an interview that you cannot guarantee that Social Security checks will be mailed if you don’t get your way, this scares the elderly. They can’t figure out how they’ll survive until a solution to the debt crisis can be reached, they have health issues and a lot don’t have any other source of income. Now that they think they won’t be able to get their medications or buy food they’ll put pressure on Congress to agree to whatever just so they can be reassured that the check will arrive. If I seem angrier than maybe I should be there’s a good reason. I remember when my mother’s health had reached a point that I moved her into my house because she couldn’t live alone anymore. I remember sitting with her at the dining room table periodically to do the bills and balance the checkbooks. As we went through that ritual I remember realizing that with her health issues things were tight, after paying several hundred dollars for prescriptions (sometimes nearly $1,000.00) she only had a couple of hundred dollars left to pay rent, utilities, bills and gas for the car to get to the doctor appointments. Even after she moved in with me, and my working, sometimes things would get tight.
On those occasions when she got sick and had to go to the hospital I began to notice a calm, peace that seemed to come over her. I finally asked my mother about it and she told me that her being in the hospital meant that she wouldn’t use her medications and she could go a little longer before needing to buy a refill. A senior living with her working son was thinking this, imagine the seniors that don’t have a family member to live with or get help from. And the President has the audacity to make the statement in an interview that he can’t guarantee that the Social Security checks will be mailed out on time for the month of August. SHAME ON YOU MR. PRESIDENT! But, the President isn’t alone in this; I didn’t hear anyone in Congress say he was wrong.
The fact is that there was enough money available to guarantee that the Social Security checks could be mailed, the government takes in 171 million dollars a month. Additionally, the last time I looked the Social Security Trust holds enough US Treasury Bonds to cover the checks. What I found interesting was the fact that in making the statement the President did he was admitting that there is no special/ separate trust fund for Social Security, that the monies comes out of General Revenue. In 2005 when President Bush wanted to make modifications to Social Security politicians kept talking about the separate fund for Social Security, a “locked box”. Well if there is a separate trust fund, a locked box, why couldn’t the President guarantee that the checks would go out?
Also, am I the only one that remembers in April of this year the President and members of Congress told us how they avoided a financial catastrophe by passing a continuing resolution that fully funded the country through the rest of the fiscal year (ending Sept. 30)? Were they lying in April or last week?
Speaking of my mother, she always told me that you shouldn’t write and send things when you’re angry. You could write and get the anger out, BUT don’t submit or mail what you wrote (press send for those of you that don’t remember a time before computers). I decided to take her advice and wait until the weekend, that’s why this wasn’t posted sooner (I had a chance to go back and come up with a better way to articulate my thoughts i.e. clean it up). As I sat down this evening to finish my draft and post it the announcement came that S&P was lowering the US credit rating from AAA to AA+. This wasn’t supposed to happen if the legislation passed earlier this week.
Now the blame game will start all over again. It’s the President’s fault because he went to Chicago to celebrate his 50th birthday at a fundraiser, it’s the Republicans fault because they gave in to the Tea Party, and it’s the Tea Party’s fault because they don’t support the status quo.
I’m not going to fault the President for celebrating his 50th birthday, it’s a milestone and unless you believe in reincarnation it only happens once in your life. I’m not going to blame him for the fundraiser, trust me if I had found someone that was willing to pay $35,000 dollars to have dinner with me when I turned 50 I’d have been there with bells on! That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to fault him for this downgrade, because it is his fault, and the Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party.
(end of Part 1)
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