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Time For a Truthful Congress
A lot has been discussed in the media and around workplace water coolers on the just what role the tenor of partisan debate in Congress played in the recent shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and those present at her Tucson event exercising their civic freedom. While there is no hard evidence connecting political discourse and the horrific act perpetrated on Ms. Giffords and her constituents, what is evident is that it is time for Congress to stop misleading the American people and start engaging in honest discourse.
There are many issues that could be called upon to illustrate congressional malfeasance but health care, earmarks, and immigration will do nicely. The debate over health care is arguably the most dishonest political debate in our history. First and foremost, it was never about health care but rather health insurance.
Reforming health care would ensure a heart attack victim would not be placed on a stretcher in the corner of an emergency room for days until they die. Reforming health care would ensure if you and your doctor decide that given your family history you should have a colonoscopy at age 45, you would have one. Reforming health care would ensure the availability of prenatal care to women of every socio and economic class, resulting in lower infant mortality, healthier babies and future healthier adults. Reforming health care would mean a child with diabetes would continue to have their diabetes treated when they became an adult.
The debate we had in America last year was not about the health care you and I receive but rather who would be eligible to get health care (insured) and who would pay for it. The debate was never about you and me but rather government and big business— single payer versus the status quo. Death panels, government takeover of health care and now, the repeal of so-called “job killing” Obamacare are all disingenuous political catch phrases designed to distract and redirect our collective attention from what is really going on— having won the government versus big business battle of last year, big business is attempting to roll back what meager assurances you and I gained from the political negotiation that went on during last year’s debate.
Calling for an end to congressionally directed spending, or earmarks, is definitely the biggest misinformation campaign conducted by political leaders in modern history. Even if Congress ends the practice, it will not save $1— not one dollar —from the federal budget. Every earmark dollar is taken from the already approved budgets of the various federal agencies. Eliminating the earmark does not mean the agency will receive less money, it just means they will have more to money to spend on things the agency decides to spend money on.
True earmark reform would occur when agencies are consulted and projects that advance an agency’s mission in a way that facilitates their directive in a meaningful way are authorized and appropriated by Congress. This would not only get funds back to a Congressman’s or Senator’s jurisdiction but also provide agencies with a viable networking of local resources that advance their missions and provide benefit to the entire country. The current debate over earmarks is not about reigning in spending so our grandchildren won’t be paying our debt in the future. Politicians primarily care about their political power today and the earmark debate is the single best example of just how deceptive they can be in an effort to increase that power.
As disturbing as the health care and earmark debates are, the most dishonest debate of the day is that over immigration. Whether we want to admit it or not, this is the new Civil Rights front. Much like Blacks during the Jim Crow era, Hispanics now live in fear in America. All Blacks were tainted with the history of slavery; all Hispanics are now tainted with the label “illegal alien.”
National security, sovereignty, and jobs have all been used to vilify a race of people who seek to toil in areas most of us turned our backs on generations ago. Immigrants seek to educate their children so they may live a more comfortable life than their parents did; they seek to live peacefully and with pride of their heritage. Sound familiar?
Congress has declared our borders are too porous but that wasn’t a problem when our collective attention on the southern border revolved around the so-called War on Drugs during which the price of drugs actually fell because so many drug shipments were able to penetrate our southern border. Now the rallying cry is terrorism but the overwhelming majority of all verified terrorist entry into the U.S. comes across our northern border with Canada. Why isn’t Congress demanding a fence to the North? Because they are not Hispanic, plain and simple.
“They are taking jobs away from Americans,” is another favorite rant of those opposed to immigration in Congress. However, it isn’t the high tech, nursing, manufacturing, or other well-paying jobs we Americans seek that these nefarious border-crossers are taking. Any number of independent studies indicate that the only jobs that undocumented workers fill are low, non-skilled manual labor opportunities paying minimum wage or slightly higher.
What flies in the face of political reality is that legal foreign workers, whether immigrant or non-immigrant, in many cases actually raise the wages and working conditions of American workers but you will never hear that articulated by Congress. Nor will you hear them admit that it is our fellow Americans who are hiring them because THEY don’t want to hire American workers. Hispanics are not to blame in this situation, it is Americans who are giving “our” jobs away to so-called illegal aliens. Just as we did as the era of Jim Crow came to an end, we Americans need to look inside to ourselves and stop pointing the finger of blame at an entire race of people who hold no responsibility for what we accuse them of.
Whether it is health care, earmarks, immigration or another issue, the American people need to demand that those we send to Congress to represent us actually tell us the truth. Without knowing the truth, our freedom and God-given rights are always in jeopardy.
Jan
And with luck, it’ll only be for two years.
That was very well said.
I think we need to cut the deficit, but health care reform, jobs, and technological advancement are key to our growth as a nation.
Amen brother!
It’s about time we had a forum to obtain real knowledge about the reasons those we elected make their decisions. Thank you so very much. As a Hispanic it gets old being labeled. Let’s talk about the truth of quality of work and work ethic; customer focus and simple ” getting more bang for our buck” from the Hispanic workforce.
When it comes to the immigration debate there is often an elephant in the room that no one acknowledges. What is the REAL truth of why some American businesses hire foreign workers rather than their American born counterparts?
Is the answer low wages workers? I believe that sometimes this is the reason. But if and when this is the case, is it just greed, or could it be something more?
It is the “something more” that is the elephant in the room.
Bravo. You are squarely on point with the immigration debate! The immigration dialogue has been hijacked for far too long.
Concerning your closing statement, Yes, it IS the TRUTH that will set us all free. Good work John!
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Healthcare in America is an embarrassment to our country and to free society. What is wrong with the delivery of an affordable system where all Americans are equal to the same available treatment. On the subject of Hispanics “taking our jobs…” from whom? We are Americans, whether Hispanic, European,Asian etc. So, who gets the right to point the finger at any group for wanting an opportunity for the best for themselves and their family? And for working hard to it. How soon we forget what all of our forefathers faced when coming to the proverbial “melting pot of the world.”
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It’s a pattern the U.S. has repeated over and over for 100 years. It first supports thugs and dictators for “pragmatic” or “national interest” reasons, then is caught totally flat-footed when people rise up, overthrow them, and bitterly hate the U.S. thereafter.
Mubarek must go; anything else is too little and much to late.
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I do have a bit of a guilty conscience. But I am a “live for the moment” kind of person, and prefer to have disposable income today, because I don’t know if I’ll even be alive 5-10 years from now, let alone 50.
No poll numbers on the gop 2012 hopefuls?
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There nothing like a long term life to engender a long term view. Clearly this lies in your future, but I encourage you to begin developing this at the earliest moment. Becoming a parent, whenever anyone chooses to do so, provides a living and loving link to a posterity that walks and talks.
on a bunch of folks waiting for transplants.
But I will be in such staggering debt by the time I’m through med school, I will be compelled to require a good deal of money for my services. In other words, if the American People continually vote to live in a “screw or be screwed” society, then even the well-meaning are faced with choosing one or the other. And if it comes to that, you know which one I will pick. I’d much prefer that it didn’t.
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