2003
There you go again, Mr. President (George W.Bush), you are the using the present soaring price of gasoline to resurrect your longstanding desire to risk potential environmental disaster by permitting drilling for oil on our continental shelf. The hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to build off-shore oil rigs would be better spent by creating incentives to promote further expansion of wind, solar, bio-fuel and other renewable energy sources.
Have you forgotten the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska., one of the most devastating environmental disasters ever to occur at sea? Oil rigs as well as tankers are susseptable to accidental damage, with the potential of spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into our precious off-shore habitat areas.
In the five or more years it would potentioally take to get off-shore oil fields into production, more rapid movement toward hybrid, electric, and hydrogen fueled cars would be a far better way to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.
2008
During the congressional recess, let’s hope real debate of Health Care Reform legislation takes place.
Questions I would like to see debated:
Would a “public option” reimburse doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other providers at rates comparable to Medicare reimbursement or at rates comparable to private health insurance plans?
If the former is true, are providers willing to be reimbursed at markedly reduced rates for folks enrolled in a public option? If not, will they have the option to refuse to care for persons insured under the public option?
Those pursuing proposing a public option should be prepared to come up with a ballpark estimate of what it would cost for, say a family of four earning up to $50,000.
What will it cost the government to subsidize those at or below the poverty level
(Currently at $17,650 for a family of four)?
There are obviously many more questions and permutations. But answering the above questions wouldn’t be a bad start.
2011
There are those who have opposed Social Security from its inception, those who would privatize it and those who for ideological reasons would like to eliminate it entirely. I can understand their desire to lump SSI in with discretionary spending, Medicare and defense spending when they discuss the present deficit crisis.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the combined income from payroll taxes, taxes on benefits paid to recipients, and trust fund interest will generate sufficient income to pay Social Security Insurance benefits and Disability Insurance benefits to the year 2037. Social Security has not contributed to our present deficit. And although it will eventually require fixing, now is not the time, as the country struggles with massive unemployment and a painfully slow economic recovery.
Social Security Insurance legislation has been one of the most successful programs in our nation’s history. It must be removed from the present debate on how we as a nation address our present budgetary problems.
