Now that we are 5 days away from Election Day, we need to start asking ourselves what our future holds. By all odds we are looking at Republicans regaining control of one house of Congress, if not both. But what are our new leaders promising us? Let’s look:
– Repeal healthcare
– Extend Bush tax cuts
– Cut spending, mainly on things like social programs and infrastructure.
– “Accountability”
But what are the alternatives to these items? Go ahead and repeal healthcare, but then we are left with the same problems we had before. How will the GOP fix our old, broken system?
And if we decide to cut spending on things like Social Security, unemployment, infrastructure and all those other “socialist” programs, what’s the outcome? Is America ready to face a tidal wave of growing homeless, seniors unable to afford to live and collapsing bridges? And even if we do massive cuts on all these items, it still will not offset the deficit increasing Bush tax cuts. In the simplest of terms this is stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, or stealing from the 98% and giving to the 2%.
Then there is accountability, which will be headed by Darrell Issa. While our nation crumbles, our people go from home to street and our health declines, nothing is more important to the GOP than a bunch of witch hunts against the President. That’s pretty funny considering lying us into a war, breaking international laws and sending our troops into harms way with inadequate protection was a something not worth investigating to the GOP during Bush’s tenure. But it also distracts from the real problems Americans are facing today. Investigating the White House won’t put food on the table, keep us in a house or create jobs. As matter of fact, it will do just the opposite. It will be a massive distraction from fixing America.
The most frustrating part of this all is that American’s seem incapable of asking simple questions of candidates. When a candidate says they want to repeal healthcare, ask them how they plan to fix it. But this is America at her worst. We respond to one-liners shouted out by the party of negativity and cheer it on. We are incapable of thinking past the zingers and hoots and hollers.
If the elections go as predicted next Tuesday, this time next year we will see a very different America. It will be an America that none of us will like. There’s still time to change that by electing leaders who will actually lead and not hand out one-liners and pipe dreams.