Belittled not Forgotten

Social Security was spawned as a preventative measure to help the working man after the Great Depression. People who had worked hard their entire lives lost their life saving in the blink of an eye. The rational was that people would pay in and then one day instead of you pouring money in to Social Security, it would begin to pour money back to you. A system backed by the United States Government, the greatest country in all the land, would surely be infallible.

Jump to 2007 and times are bleak, and the system that would take care of us when we get old is in trouble. Surely a system backed by the United States, in which I pay my x% into every pay check would have money for me when I get old right? The simple fact is no it won’t.

The bread and butter of any campaign is to appeal to the middle class. This is going to be by and large the one section of the country that can take you from senator to president. Promises will be made, solutions given, and at the end of the day the middle class is taken care of: again not so much.

The article goes on and on about all the attention the so called “forgotten middle class” gets but when you get down to the end of the day, these people are forgotten. One minute the government is calling for the American people to put money into the economy and now in the middle of one of the largest housing crisis, that same government turns it back. The President when offered legislation that would expanded program a healthcare program to the middle class turns a veto’s it saying that would hurt private industry, and that it effects people who don’t need it.

The Presidential candidates are going on and on about wanting to help the middle class but are they providing any real solutions? Senator Clinton’s solution to the Social Security problem is to set up a 401(k) type account. Those who make up to $60k a year would get a $1000 dollar tax cut. The issue with this is that it sets up a volatile investment, and if there where another crash in the market, or if you retire in a down turn you return could be impacted monumentally.

John Edwards in Iowa was talking about ethanol and helping farmers who raise corn get back money in the form of subsidies. I know that his speech is geared to impact his performance in the Iowa caucus but the bottom line is that the percentage of corn farmers that grow corn for ethanol is about next none when you look at the middle class as a whole. Seriously how does this solve the major issues that face the average middle class worker. Not only is ethanol not a widely available product I don’t have the money to buy a flex fuel car because I’m too busy trying to save my house from foreclosure mean while worrying about how I will send my kids to college, while trying to save money for my retirement because the government was too busy giving subsidies to corn farmers, and fighting wars in far off countries to worry about the small issue’s like Social Security and healthcare that really do matter for the middle class.

(orginal article) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101601537.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

The Poor Kids...

On October 3, 2007 President George W. Bush, vetoed only his 4^th piece of legislation. The bill that he halted wasn’t for some kind of bi-partisan agenda, it was a health care bill designed to extend the SCHIP program.

SCHIP is designated to grant insurance to low income families that either cannot afford insurance and is not provided for by an employer. In its current form only kids in households of families that make $17,000 a year can qualify. The proposed new bill would have extend that to a large number, including children in a household up to $83,000 but supporting most at less than $40,000 dollar range.

The rhetoric that the President used as his basis to veto the bill, was that the health care industry would move from private industry to a completely government run system. This would hurt the private sector by eliminating a whole sector of the healthcare industry. Sabastian Mallaby of the Washington Post brings up some very interesting numbers to quite the contrary, and while the article is prior to the veto the information is still relevant due to a possible congress override of the veto, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001035.html).

The President said that Millions of kids would leave private insurance to go to the State funded programs. The reality is that about 10 million uninsured would now have the health care they need, that’s about 2/3 of the eligible. The other 1/3 has gaps in their current coverage that could be filled by SCHIP. The other fact is that private companies administer the benefits, and patients will still see private doctors and nurses.

Bush also believes that people should be held accountable for their own health and if they can rely on government than they don’t have to do that. Mallaby makes good points about people in socialized healthcare countries actually live longer than here in the United States, but let’s step away from that. The bigger issue is that this bill only affects kids and no matter what reality TV will tell us these kids can’t take care of themselves. Under the law kids aren’t held accountable for most actions, and they can’t be made to have to make decisions such as how to take care of themselves, what drugs they should be taking if they are sick.

The bottom line is that the President vetoed a bill designed to help a segment of our population that can’t help themselves, and due to the outrageous cost of healthcare their families can’t provide either. It is my hopes that Bush can sleep well at night knowing that he has no problem spending billions of dollars on a war for people in another country but can’t allocate 35 million to help kids in his own.