Friday, August 12, 2011

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

So Patty Murray is on the Super Congress

I'm trying to decide what to write to Patty Murray, one of my state's Senator's that is on the Super Congress.

I'll post my letter to her here.

Dear Senator Murray,

Congratulations on being named to the Super Congress. I am proud that a Senator from our state has been chosen to this group. As a constituent, I have some points I would like to make.

If gridlock in the SC happens, I will welcome the enormous Defense cuts that will occur as part of the trigger. We spend way too much on defense. I know this would hurt some of our citizens who work for Boeing here in the state, but so be it.

I agree that Medicare needs to be revamped, but the Republican proposals are simply cost shifting and not real solutions. Medicare should be able to negotiate with drug companies and import drugs from Canada. Fee for service is a broken and wasteful delivery model. I'm not sure what good raising the retirement age does. Protecting the current Medicare model for citizens 55 years or older is simply pandering and as a citizen that must pay taxes to support that current model while seeing my future benefits decline is unfair. We ALL must pay a price here, including senior citizens and baby boomers. Another way to save billions a year in Medicare is to strengthen it's fraud investigation branch. 60 minutes ran a story a couple years ago about how easy it is to rip off Medicare with stolen SS numbers, since Medicare must reimburse all claims within 30 days. The fraud enforcement office of Medicare is underfunded and understaffed. This kind of scenario is exactly the kind of fuel that is used to encourage distrust in Government. This has to stop.

Social Security can be fixed by simply lifting the current ceiling on wages. Right now, Social Security only taxes about 86% of all income. If you raise this to 90% as it used to be in the 80's, then Social Security is fine. Social Security did NOT cause our deficits.

Medicaid gets the short end of the stick on entitlements. It is bare bones already, and cutting it more with make things worse.

Revenues must go up. I am completely ok with having my taxes rise with the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts. My wife and I earned about $110k last year, so I'm not one of the $250k income people who are used as the floor of the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. We all need to chip in more to pay for the things that we demand of our government. The loopholes that the President mentioned during the debt limit talks should also be in play, as well as oil company tax breaks an the ability of hedge fund managers to only be taxed at 15%. A majority of Americans support higher taxes to pay the deficit. Not just Democrats or Republicans, but Americans. Please listen to our citizens.

Perhaps something that the SC can propose would be the elimination of campaign contributions to elected officials. ALL of our problems with pork and tax loopholes and lobbying and corruption are because of money in politics. Money is NOT free speech, and purging money from politics would eliminate all the other problems that we talk about, like Citizen's United, Campaign Finance Reform, etc. We should have public financing of elections, with a cap on how much each campaign can spend. I want you and all of your Congressional colleagues to stop begging for money and do you jobs of running the country.

The current London riots are a preview of what is to come to our shores unless something is done about the gross inequality that we have in this country.

Yes, we do have a long-term budget deficit, but our priority should be on putting our citizens back to work. I implore you to not let the Republican's talking points infect your discussions with the media and your fellow members of Congress. What is good for business is not always good for America; stop calling the rich 'job creators'; we are not in a country that is over taxed and over regulated; we are in a jobs crisis, not a debt crisis; the stimulus did work, but it was too small; knowing what we know now about how bad it was in 2008. The very markets that Republicans are telling us know best are FLOODING money into buying Treasuries irregardless of S&P's downgrade on our debt. It is so cheap for the US to borrow money right now. This proves that markets are not concerned about our deficit, but about the health of the world economy.

With President Obama seemingly incapable of standing up to Republicans (or not wanting to thinking that it hurts his chances of re-election), this means the task falls to you. Don't let us down.

And please keep your talks secret so that we can avoid the posturing that we saw all sides do during the debt ceiling debate.

I know that a lot of this is a wish list of liberal ideas, but the fact that we have this Super Congress for cutting seems to be a fulfillment of a wish of our right-leaning citizens who despise the welfare state, so why not have some liberal ideas in the mix?

Thank you for your Service,

Travis Fischer



Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Duh!

Ezra Klein has a post worth reading. What is sad about this is that people are JUST NOW realizing this. To assume that Republicans would compromise is...just nuts. It's not that Republicans are crazy, but crazy smart at playing the game. They are like a spoiled brat kid who knows that her parents won't let anything bad happen to her. So she can do whatever she wants and will get bailed out EVERY TIME. Even if she does get in some trouble, mom and dad are right there to help her. There is never a chance at giving her responsibility and letting her deal with the consequences.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Doom

Who says the US is still a great nation? I'm sorry, but this whole 'US needs to be #1 at everything' while turning a blind eye to the wealthy elite who own and control everything around here are deluding themselves. To still be shocked by the Democrats seemingly helplessness over Republicans hostage taking (yet Obama will still rake in a BILLION dollars in campaign contributions, with millions coming from WallStreet) just don't seem to get it. The system is rigged and we are really doomed. It's just a matter of time.