Last-ditch effort to avoid ‘fiscal cliff’ is under way
December 28, 2012 at 10:53 am in Duluth News Tribune
The end game at hand, the White House and Senate leaders launched a final attempt at compromise Friday night in hopes of preventing a toxic blend of middle-class tax increases and spending cuts from taking effect at the turn of the new year. Continue Reading
I am not sure why anyone would want the existing tax cut related to the reduction in Social Security taxes to continue. That money is coming right out of the future pockets of those who will need it to retire. And the argument that “Social Security/Medicare may not be there in the future” for many of us just doesn’t hold water. The trust fund monies are now being affected, and the accounts of every working person who might draw payments when eligible are being reduced.
I can’t believe people are not up in arms about this politically-based fact twisting being foisted upon them. I also can’t believe our elected representatives aren’t talking more openly about this, and the media providing better education about what is really going to impact us in the future as we approach retirement.
There are other ways to save money for elder folks in the programs they may come to depend upon: Allow Medicare/Medicaid to competiively bid drug pricing like the VA; raise the SS wage tax applicability cutoff; cut the waste, overcharging and outright theft from the programs; and start vigorously prosecuting those individuals, doctors and hospitals who abuse the system. People’s health issues are about reasonable levels of profitabilty for the healthcare industry, not greed, outrageous compensation and undue focus on stock price growth
As for the rest of the excessive pork in our federal budget, cut it out for good and work on readjusting our economy to more realistically reflect job and economic growth where it is truly beneficial to us all—and for the right reasons. This shipping of jobs and production out of the country for a buck more doesn’t work. We are an advanced society, with the attendant overhead associated with the benefits we have worked so hard for and which we all should enjoy. We cannot compete with third-world countries that do not have decent standards of living, health care, transportation and utilities infrastructure, clean water and air, reasonable systems of law and human decency, and all the other attendant overhead costs a modern society has to incur.
I agree with Warren Buffet: if our politicians cannot run this country for the benefit of its people (and the ultimate benefit of the all the rest of the people in the world), and within a reasonable budget every year, throw them out! I don’t care if they be Democrats or Republicans or Independents or whatever.
How did we, the voting public, ever allow things to get this twisted?
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