AMERICAN MANDATE?

According to the Republican leadership, most Americans

• Want the richest of the rich to have additional tax breaks.
• Don’t want those who are unemployed to have continued benefits.
• Don’t want a nuclear treaty with Russia.
• Think that U.S. Representatives who make an average of $765,000 a year will look out for us.
• Think that U.S. Senators who make an average of $2.4 million annually will look out for us.
• Don’t care that the top 0.01% averaged 976 times more income than 90% of us.
• Don’t care that the top 10% owned 71.5% of the country’s wealth in 2007.
• Don’t care that the lowest 50% of us owned only 2.5% of the U.S. wealth.
• Don’t care that the top 1% owned almost 51% of the U.S. Stocks, Bonds, and Mutual Funds.
• Don’t care that the bottom 50% of us owned only one half of one percent of those.
• Want to raise retirement age, even though the rich are the only ones who live longer.
• Think it’s okay that CEOs’ pay was up 298.2% in 2006, adjusting for inflation.
• Think it’s okay that minimum wage fell by 9.3% in 2006, adjusting for inflation.
• Don’t care that corporations that yell the loudest actually paid less in taxes than the rest of us.
• Don’t care that people who make less than $106,800 pay 6.2% of their salary to Social Security, while those who make $1 million only pay 0.66% of theirs into Social Security.
• Want to go into debt an additional $114 BILLION dollars each year to extend Bush Tax Cuts for the rich.
• Don’t care that our personal savings dropped from a high in 1982 of 10.9% to a low of 1.4% in 2005.
• Want the U.S. to spend more money on defense than all the rest of the countries on Earth combined—including China.
• Want women to be paid less than men doing the same job.
• Don’t care that the difference between the wealthiest and the median household income increased from 131 times (1983) to 190 times in 2004.
• Think it’s okay that the middle class has paid income taxes at the same rate for 50 years--since 1960.
• Think it’s okay that tax rates for the top 0.01% decreased from a high of about 75% around 1972 to the current rate of 35%.
• Don’t really care if everyone has health care coverage.
• Want to protect doctors who maim or kill people through negligence, but don’t want to protect the individuals and/or families who suffer by limiting the amounts paid.
• Think it’s okay for corporations to hold $2 Trillion in profits as ransom for getting even more tax breaks.

Are these truly things Americans want? Not the ones I talk to!

America, wake up. Who are our politicians looking out for? Let them know that we want them looking out for the vast majority of us and not for the wealthiest few! We have had an unspoken social contract for many, many years that assured everyone that we would look out for one another. Our politics affirmed that throughout “the good old days” that we all remember so fondly.

As one of Oklahoma’s own, J.C. Watts, said in 2000 about the budget surplus left from the Clinton years, that the GOP wanted 90% to be used to pay down our debt, and that the other 10% be used to "take care of a lot of priorities we have, like prescription drugs, making sure that our education needs are met, making sure some of our national security needs are met, and doing that while at the same time protecting the Social Security surplus and the Medicare surplus."

Just ten years ago, those were the GOP’s top priorities? What a difference 10 years can make!

We still need to protect Social Security (raise the maximum taxable amount so that the rich pay the same percentage as the rest of us). But we cannot afford extending tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, especially since doing so doesn’t help the economy or improve employment. (Hint: it didn’t at any time during the past 9 years since they were implemented. In fact, corporations had record-breaking profits and gave sky-high bonuses to executives.) We must take care of our unemployed. We have to ensure that our educational system graduates more students and that young people can afford to attend community colleges, technology schools, or universities. We have to protect our country at the same time. Our infrastructure needs dramatic renovations. And, we must continue Health Care Reform that is so vital to all of us.

It will take a while to alleviate the deficit we have now. Bill Clinton successfully took a budget deficit of $290.3 Billion and turned it into a $128.2 Billion surplus, but it took over four years for see the turn-around. And, we weren’t going through one of the most severe recessions ever at that time. We have to make common sense changes.

Helping one another is a cornerstone of America that has served us well for many, many years. It never was, and never will be, right to ignore those around us who are suffering, while lining the pockets of the extremely wealthy.