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THE JOURNAL OF STEFFANIE RIVERS: Ideology vs. Reality
*While Congress was busy throwing a $700 billion lifeline to greedy white-collar business executives on Wall Street to salvage their portfolios and credit ratings, a 90-year-old woman about to be evicted from her foreclosed home tried to commit suicide. Now Fannie Mae executives say they will sign over the property to the elderly woman and forgive her loan.
So it has come to this? Do people have to attempt suicide to get the same consideration of forgiveness Congress has given to Wall Street? How could a politician agree to hand over $700 billion dollars to Wall Street executives without as much as a slap on the hand for their transgressions, but ignore everyday people unable to pay their mortgage loans? Some say it’s a matter of ideology versus reality.
Ideally some politicians (mostly republicans) believe in less government interference in people’s lives. So despite a family’s loss of wages or other misfortune, some republicans are against extending government programs such as unemployment benefits to bail out everyday Americans, and against the type of health insurance that would insure every American has the basic coverage.
Those republicans fail to realize in an ideal world there would be no need for unemployment benefits or a Wall Street bailout.
In an ideal republican world vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin would actually know the answers to the questions she was asked during the vice presidential debate last week instead of skirting the issues and shouting out her homies as a camouflage. But I digress.
Realistically, half of every dollar earned by an employee goes to pay some sort of tax, including social security tax (FICA), income tax, state tax, and sales tax. By default the government already is involved in your life. So if 50% of your income goes to pay some sort of tax that helps federal, state and local government, it’s reasonable to expect government officials to pick up the slack where families fall short. That’s reality.
Government officials should not mandate Americans to pay half their income in taxes, vote to bail out people who are in the least position to need it or deserve it and then leave those hanging with the bill who most deserve to be bailed out.
Once that door has been opened other entities want to walk through it. Case in point is California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is asking Congress for a $7 billion emergency loan from the federal government to pay for “teachers' salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and every other state-funded service" this month. What state will be next to ask for and probably receive a loan?
Where will all this money come from? Just as some people write bad checks and know there’s no money in the bank to cash it, Congress is floating bail out checks knowing full well there’s not enough money to pay. Their checks are post dated. They hope that within five years Wall Street will be doing so well Congress will receive enough profit and interest payments on the post dated bail out money – coupled with increased tax revenues – to pay for the bailout checks they’ve written. In other words, they went to Vegas with the rent money and gambled it away.
If you’ve never had a reason to care about voting or Wall Street before, there is more than enough reason now to care. It’s obvious to me most of the politicians we have in office couldn’t lead a marching band, let alone lead Americans in decisions that effect their lives for generations to come.
Steffanie Rivers is a free-lance journalist living in Dallas, Texas. For public speaking inquiries, comments or questions email her at teamtcbadvertising@hotmail.com.
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