A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES!

In my early adulthood I tended to vote Democratic because I was a strong admirer of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Then later on in life I began to vote for the best candidate without regard to party affiliation. I consider myself a fiscal conservative and social moderate.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress left a bad taste in my mouth when they robbed Peter to pay Paul by dipping into the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other social programs. Our senators and congressmen were like embezzlers – they intended to put the money back into the trust fund but found out they didn’t have the money to do so. Now Social Security is on the brink of insolvency.

As a cop it was obvious to me that the Republicans were pro-law enforcement while the Democrats were more concerned about the rights of criminals. Then, when I saw the Democratic legislature in California continue to go on spending binges like a bunch of drunken sailors, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I began to vote for more Republicans than Democrats. The last ten years or so found me voting for very few Democrats. And now, I find it just as hard to vote for Republicans.

Now it’s the spend us into oblivion crowd on one side and the anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, and the slash and burn Tea Party crowd on the other. What a choice: The Obama-Reid-Pelosi crazies or the Palin-Bachmann-Tea Party crazies. A pox on both their houses!

I’m no different from any other fiscal conservative when it comes to government spending. I’m all for reducing spending and cutting out programs except, that is, when those spending and program cuts are likely to hurt my pocketbook. And that seems to be the point we are arriving at now.

The Tea Party-driven House Republicans are proposing to cut $5.8 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years. I’m all for that! That’s really great! But wait a minute, at what cost? Oh shit, they’re planning to cut the hell out Medicare and practically eliminate Medicaid. The Medicare cuts are going to really hurt my wife and me. And the Medicaid proposals are going to have a devastating effect on the poor. Fuck that shit!

The Republican plan as presented by Rep. Paul Ryan, House Budget Committee chairman, would force those of us dependent on Medicare to pay a helluva lot more for medical services. And the older we get, the more medical problems are going to pop up. The Republican plan sure looks like a plot to privatize Medicare. I remember when the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress tried to privatize Social Security. Had they succeeded, the recession would have decimated the privatized funds.

Right now, my wife and I figure we have enough saved up to last us another six or seven years. With the Republican plan our savings would probably last us only four or five years. And since we are both in our eighties, we have no chance of obtaining any gainful employment other than part-time work as Walmart greeters. But by then there wont be enough job openings at Walmart, even if we were physically capable of doing any work.

And what about the poor? The Republican plan would eliminate the federal Medicaid program by giving the states block grants for each state to establish its own medical program for the poor. That will be an utter disaster.

You will have states like New York and California that will be more generous than others, and you will have states like Texas that are tightfisted when it comes to welfare, mental health and other safety net programs. The poor will be driven to rely on emergency rooms and public hospitals in even greater numbers than those being experienced now. And who is going to end up paying for those additional emergency room and public hospital costs? It’s us suckers, the taxpayers!

So to you Democrats who want to spend us into oblivion and you Republicans who want to slash and burn the government, I say SHOVE IT UP WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!