#1 The War in Iraq
I believe the war In Iraq was a misguided venture from the start. How much of the information that the Bush Administration provided was honestly erroneous and how much was outright falsehoods is difficult to determine. But it seems to me that Congress should have been able to separate the 'wheat from the chaff'' before voting on proceeding with force against another nation.
It should have been obvious to our elected officials that something was fishy about the facts as presented when the Administration gave the opinion that Iraq was connected with the incidents of September 11, 2001. If I had been in Congress at the time, I would have voted "no".
Saddam Hussein was a secular dictator who would not tolerate any armed religious group within his domain. The power of Al-Qaeda would not have been allowed to flourish in the Iraq of Saddam. Therefore the attempt to link 9/11 and Saddam was a falsehood from the beginning.
Now that we are enmeshed in Iraq, the main question to me is this:
If we leave as soon as possible, will the situation become one in which the sacrifices and the effort thus far are for nothing?
Or if we stay on for a limited period of years with a reduced level of force, will it really help the Iraqis to move towards a working state?
Over the long term, I support withdrawing all of our armed forces from Iraq, and letting them govern themselves.
#2 The National Debt
The budgetary picture of our country is not a pretty sight. And there is no sign of a significant change in direction on the horizon. The best way to visualize the situation is by thinking of your own budget.
If your household expenses exceed your income, then most people make up the difference by borrowing the money in some way or another. Most often this is done with the use of a credit card. As the balance on the credit cards increase, so does the amount of income that must be paid on the accumulated interest. Those dollars spent on interest payments are not available for use in other areas, important items such as college tuition, saving for retirement or replacing an old vehicle.
To stave off bankruptcy, income must be increased and expenses decreased. And then income must exceeded expenses so that the accumulated debt can be paid off and the money being spent to 'service the debt' can be used for other purposes. Our country must do the same.
To increase our income we can first look to require those who have the money to pay more. The very wealthy and Corporate America have seen their share of the tax burden go down, down, down. That trend must be reversed. The first step in bringing in more cash for our national budget is to eliminate the many breaks that are giving the rich an easy ride, both personally and in their business dealings.
And we have to cut expenses. There are two obvious places to begin that process. Military spending is enormous and damaging to our national security. We must take a serious look at cutting back. And the budgetary porkfest called 'earmarking', where each member of Congress can add special requests to the budget and appropriate large chunks of money for the folks back home makes the budget process a joke. No more earmarking!
Of course this is a very involved issue, but I hope these brief comments will give you an idea as to my general attitude.
We must change our budget picture!
#3 Immigration
The current situation with legal and illegal immigrants, especially those from Latin American countries, did not develop in the past few years. It has taken decades to develop.
Historically, illegal immigrants were enticed over the border by four realities: the economic situation at home was grim, the economic situation over the border was seen as a way to earn enough to support extended families, the businesses in the United States did not care about legal paperwork for their workers, and the policing of the border was a joke.
All of these factors have combined to bring us to our current situation, where there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. The reality is that we as a nation are not going to round up and deport 15 million people.
So I propose the following:
- We accept the reality that we cannot deport millions of people.
- We secure our borders with methodologies that work, because our country must be able to control who comes in and out.
- We craft a realistic plan to allow undocumented workers already here to gain citizenship, unless they have been found to be a threat to our society.
- We implement a guest worker program that allows for the temporary importation of sufficient workers to meet the needs of American businesses.
Many workers who come over the border to earn enough to survive would prefer to live in their home country, but cannot do so because they do not have the correct work status.
Our economy needs the labor of our neighbor to the South. Our tax system and Social Security systems need additional workers paying into the accounts. We should proceed accordingly.
#4 Health Care
This is an issue that is truly a matter of life and death for many people, and also an issue that has no clear or easy answers. Of course, as always, the problems are much easier to define than the solutions.
The situation is:
- the people with good insurance, mostly offered through their employers coverage, are in the best shape.
- the people on some form of government funded insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, V.A benefits and others are not doing so well. More and more doctors are refusing to see Medicare/Medicaid patients due to the fact that the amount the government pays is well below what the medical providers wish to charge. V.A benefits do not cover dental issues. There is no requirement that doctors see any patients. Doctors are not allowed to accept additional payments from people on a government program; they cannot make up the difference with cash.
- those large numbers of people who have no insurance are risking their economic well being every day. One broken bone or significant injury and the debt becomes too much to pay. Many of these folks are the workers who do not receive insurance through their jobs, and do not qualify for any government program. This number grows every day.
- due to the fact that in Wyoming, people are not turned away from the E.R., the cost of emergency care is paid by the taxpayers in some form or fashion.
- when people do not have insurance, they tend to wait until a situation is truly an emergency before taking action. Some people who wait too long are faced with a life and death struggle. Some people lose that fight.
Some ideas to consider:
- I support a Wyoming based state funded, voluntary, insurance pool. The government backs up the pool with a pot of money, and the payments taken in and the cost paid out are equal over time. The insurance industry is the bad guy in most of the problems in the health care issue. The initial group in the pool would be all workers who are paid with public money. As time passes, all citizens could become eligible. The pool would offer a non-profit competitor to the insurance industry. Premiums could be on a sliding fee scale.
- We currently have some health care providers on the government payroll. The public health nurses, employed in most counties, are paid by the state. That is a very limited version of socialized medicine. It would be possible to hire general care doctors under the same concept. Would the people support such an expansion?
- As the baby boomers age and start to draw more heavily on the health care system, all of the problems will become worse.