Road Block Deadlock

All right, it's time to stop fixating on each party blocking the other party and work together to move the nation off the railroad tracks before the train comes along.

Okay, there have to be budget cuts, and yes, they must include parts of the major entitlement programs; I say that as a Democrat and beneficiary of Social Security and Medicare myself. Those who have no other income should not bear the burden, but those of us who do have other resources should not expect full benefits to go on increasing forever. Incremental reductions over several years need not be a disaster.

Republican spokespeople are fond of saying that new taxes destroy jobs. What do they think budget cuts do? I am told (today's Spokane Spokesman-Review editorial) that failure to renew the operating authority of the Federal Aviation Administration last week laid off 4,000 clerical workers, and that in turn halted construction work on the nation's airports and runways, suspending the jobs of the construction workers.

Hospital emergency rooms have been the last resort of the uninsured ill and injured. Now there is a movement afoot, already enacted into law in some states, to limit Medicaid patients to only three paid ER visits per year, with shared computer data bases to detect hospital-hopping. With unpaid ER visits increasing each year, hospitals have no other choice when their funding is cut, but what is the child with chronic severe asthma or any number of other maladies to do?

Yes, small businesses need reassurance that they can plan ahead on tax rates, etc., but the mega-corporations' profits are doing quite well, thank you, and they may have to struggle along, even without the tax loopholes and exclusions and subsidies to which they have been accustomed.

One big difference between President Obama's four trillion dollar debt reduction and the one trillion proposed by Mr. Boehner is the saving in annual interest costs. At six per cent, that extra three trillion cut saves l80 billion dollars per year. So, enough with the smokescreens already. Even the Congressional rookies will have to learn to sacrifice. It comes with the job.