OPINION - Republicans Want America to Become 3rd Rate

"Dems want to Keep America #! -- Reps would Let It Sink to 3rd Rate" by Clifford Wilson, Cliff's Notes 4/18/2011

The radical right wing Republicans inspired by the Tea Party fanatics punted and didn’t shut the government down over the 2011 budget. Yet, they continue to push the draconian Ryan budget that with all its’ double talk will result in the America becoming a third-rate nation in thirty years.

There is a clear philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats . The radical Reps, having been absorbed by the tea party folks, are determined to use fiscal issues and the so called debt limit crisis to impose their version of morality upon the American people. All sides agree that some spending needs to be curtailed. But the Democrats are not about to allow the radical Republicans to end all appropriations for Planned Parenthood and other programs that benefit the middle class citizens of the country. (Planned Parenthood cannot use federal money for abortions - that’s been illegal for decades. But these radical Republicans want to make sure my daughters and someday my granddaughters can’t go to Planned Parenthood for contraceptive services and health services for women. So the radical Republicans just keep repeating the lie that all Planned Parenthood does is provide abortion services and turn a spending priority issue into a right-to-life cause.)

While at it these folks want to make sure that government agencies don’t do their job. In fact in many cases, e.g. Department of Education, they want to abolish the agencies. They want to restrict the Environmental Protection Agencies' employees from protecting the environment. Just for good measure they'd cut out PBS and Sesame Street which they think has been a left-wing conspiracy to poison the minds of our kids. I watched Sesame Street with my children thirty years ago and my grandchildren just a few years ago and if there ever was anything worth my tax dollars it was that show.

The greatest outrage of the Ryan Radical Republican plan is the repeal of Medicare. A guaranteed low cost medical insurance for all citizens over 65 would end for anyone under 55 today. Those younger persons, paying payroll taxes to support Medicare, would be given vouchers to help them buy medical insurance. The insurance companies, if they will insure seniors (one of the reasons we have Medicare is because the private sector didn’t want to do that), will make more money and seniors will pay as much as $6500 more per year. Or in many cases their children would have to pay – a middle class already unable to make ends meet would now be deprived of one of its major economic mainstays. And don’t doubt it – if they succeed in gutting Medicare they will try again to privatize Social Security and subject seniors income to the roller-coaster of the stock market.

These Tea Party radicals who control the Republican Party don’t believe there is a function for government. Everything can be done and run by private sector interests motivated by desire to make profit. We have built in the US a society with a mixed approach to both economic control and political control. We have tried to create a country with the broadest political freedoms for all the people and limited restrictions on a free market economy - with regulations to protect the majority of people from being controlled by the rich and big business interests and having their lives negatively impacted by the vagaries of economic trends.

If you don’t believe that government should do anything (except impose your moral standards on the population) - the radicals have a plan to sell you (can’t sell you a bridge because they want to cut funds to repair them). But, if you believe that people should get an unemployment check because they lost their job in the Bush Republican caused Great Recession; or get some low interest loans so young people can afford to attend college; then you understand and support a government that helps people who need help (one of the purposes of government according to the first Republican President Abraham Lincoln)

It is hypocritical to say the least for these radical Republicans who claim they want to get the government off people’s backs (rich people at least) by cutting taxes and keeping the government out of their pocket book to argue that the only way to balance our budgets is to undue the social progress that has changed this country over the past one hundred years. Now that the majority of Americans have accepted the concept that black or white, gay or straight, male or female, young and old, everyone should have a piece of the American pie these radical Republicans want to burn the pie and toss it out. They will not win, because the American story is not finished; and, the march to progress, which began here in 1607, many times hitting bumps in the road and even setbacks, will continue. As FDR said in the speech he never got to give “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”