Off the Editor’s Desk – 9-25-2013

DON’T SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN

The big news coming out of Washington D.C. is that the House has passed a bill that would keep the government in money by raising the debt ceiling level, but defund the Affordable Health Care Act, (AHCA) or better known as Obamacare.

 The senate will not approve of this nor will the president. The president stated that being able to borrow more money to keep the government from defaulting is not putting us deeper into debt. He is wrong. Borrowing more money will put us deeper into debt.

We need to keep the government running, but we also need to stop spending so much.

We have a spending problem in this country. The federal government is now taking in more money than ever before. But we are spending more than we are taking in.

If you all can remember, back in 2008 when then-candidate Obama cited President Bush for borrowing more money to keep the federal government afloat. Well Obama has borrowed much more than Bush and tells us he has not put us deeper into debt.

Ever since President Lyndon Johnson’s great society came into law, we have become a society that is dependent on the federal government. We are not able to fend for ourselves and have become a society that looks for handouts from someone else.

Now forty percent of the population has to care for the other 60 percent. We have almost 50 million people on food stamps receiving an average of $133 a month in benefits. There are millions of people who have stopped looking for work and are receiving unemployment benefits or other government payments.

But then, I look forward to my monthly government check that is a repayment for some of the funds that I put into the government run social security system.  Up to 12.4 percent of my annual income for the past 54 years has gone into social security and I believe that I have earned that check. Oh, my mistake, it is what is direct deposited into my bank account.

Now, I listened this weekend to the news channels, even to the liberal so-called news channels that blame all our woes on someone else and do not want to come up with some sort of solution other than spending more money.

But I heard a voice on the Fox news channel that said Obamacare would collapse under its own weight, when the American people find out how much more their health insurance will cost with all the items that have to be covered by insurance companies. Then there is also the draining of the Medicare fund moving millions of dollars away from senior citizens to cover those who do not have insurance. There are also the taxes and penalties associated with the AHCA. There is the belief that as many as 20 million people will choose to pay the fine instead of paying the high insurance premiums.

Thanks for reading.

— Carlton