Letters to the Politicians

April 10, 2010

Sent to Obama, Pelosi, Bishop, Reid, Gillibrand, Schumer

I'm in the middle of that annoying time of year – income-tax preparation – and am seething over the news that 47% in our country will pay no federal income taxes.1  They will get credits that were designed to lift them out of poverty thanks to a program enacted by Congress in 1975.2  Can you tell me if that is working? 

We're creating a welfare state that is poised to consume more than it is capable of producing.  Millions are unemployed and yet your political tribe spent more than a year jamming a health care program down our throats rather than working on the economy.  It doesn't take a genius to know that potential employers aren't going to hire workers until there's evidence that an entrepreneur can have a chance of making a profit for his or her investment in time and money. The professors or career politicians seem incapable of understanding that basic concept.

It's discouraging to learn – "after the package was unwrapped", as Nancy Pelosi said – that there are provisions that will bankrupt our country and enslave future generations.  One provision seems to have exempted members of Congress (and their staff) from the same coverage that everyone will be compelled to purchase.

S.E.C. chairwoman, Mary L. Shapiro, speaking about financial reform bills, said that financial companies needed to "keep skin in the game."3   It seems to me that neither Congress nor the 47% have the motivation to keep the game in action.  Your political tribe is ruthless in consolidating power evidenced by the bribes and arm-twisting needed to enact the widely unpopular health-care bill to the delight of the 47% and the anger of the 53% who are going to have to pay for this debacle.

Those who have no skin in the game love this bill – they've got nothing to lose.  There will come a time when the follies of this administration and the rotten fruit that it has produced will bubble to the surface and foul the air just as methane does when it bubbles up from the swamp.  Barack Obama, the candidate, promised to eliminate the pork and yet there's so much pork in '09 that it takes 37,450 lines to list it all. 4

It appears that the progressives, for all their rhetoric about improving the lives of Americans, have contributed to the continuance of a class of dependent people.  It's mysterious how you folks could end a successful educational program that granted poor D.C. kids and their parents an alternative choice rather than bondage to the dysfunctional Washington school system. 

I'll bet that by this time next year, if the trough-feeding elected officials aren't thrown out, the 47% will increase in number.  Brian DeVane, in a letter in today's Wall Street Journal pointed out that "entitlement and dependency are learned behaviors."  You are a contributing factor to that dependency.  Shame on you!
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1 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html/print?x=0
2 http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/apr/09/help-available-to-apply-for-federal-tax-credit/?print=1
3 Wyatt, Edward, "S.E.C. Moves to Tighten Rules…", New York Times, 4/7/10
4 http://max.omb.gov/earmarks-public/2009_download.html