According to Sam and Jim Commenting on things that irk us off, make us laugh out loud or just seem too weird too believe According to Sam and Jim: Dear mom in tennis shoes

Monday, August 15, 2011

Dear mom in tennis shoes

Dear Senator Patty Murray, aka “mom in tennis shoes”:

You asked me recently to urge members of Congress to forge together a new budget debt ceiling deal, so I urged.

Now I have a favor to ask of you. Since you are sitting on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, could you possibly talk some sense into the other committee members and convince them that we can cut the budget from here to you-know-where and back but that is only going to plunge us deeper into the abyss?

I totally agree with Rick Ungar, a frequent writer, speaker and consultant on health care policy and politics and regular contributor to Forbes magazine when he says, . . . "today’s debt is the direct result of wanting both guns (two foreign wars and heavy spending for homeland security here at home) and butter (massive tax cuts totaling over $3 trillion in costs to the federal government, the creation of the Medicare drug benefit at an estimated cost to the government of over $1 trillion, and huge increases in annual budget spending.”

I know you asked people to wait a little while before sending you suggestions on how to resolve our country’s economic crises, but we can’t wait. Here are my suggestions:

1. Create jobs. People who are working will spend money. So what if the federal government has to hire a million people to pick up cigarette butts at our national parks? At least those people will be spending their pay checks and gaining much needed self-esteem. FDR and his crew got it right with the CCC, the WPA and similar programs. Our country’s infrastructure needs work; our roads and water and sewer systems are shot. The danged roads are so rough these days I I can hardly fall asleep in the car anymore.

2. Quit cutting taxes. We need to pay our bills. Americans should consider it our right, privilege and duty to pay taxes. We cannot afford to listen much longer to the whiners who say taxes are a burden. Baloney! Those people who are out of work should realize that paying taxes beats standing in the unemployment and food bank lines. FDR rightly resisted the pleas of the budget balancers and raised taxes, even in the face of stiff opposition from extremist groups who would have destabilized politics and destroyed our two-party system (why does that sound familiar?).

3. Get us the heck out of Irag and Afghanistan. It is a basic rule of economics 101 that we cannot fight wars and have butter too. Tremendous sacrifices were made by American citizens during WWII. I am all for a strong military, but on our own soil, not where we continue to build hatred for the U.S. It is reported that this year’s cost of the Afghan War has jumped to $60 billion and we have spent more than $220 billion there thus far. The military budget for 2010, 4% larger than 2009, rang up a $636 billion bill and no doubt it will be even costlier in 2011. And what about lost American lives ?

The sad thing is, Bin Laden and his cohorts will win their war against America if we continue to wage economic battles against ourselves. The strike at the Twin Towers as the symbolic heart of America’s wealth should warn us that we our country is grave danger of collapsing and burning just like the towers.

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