I keep hearing our leaders telling us that every American needs to tighten our belt and pull together during these tough times. I'm beyond sick of hearing people say that our country is broke and we can't continue to bankrupt it with our massive government spending.
My family and I have been in an austerity mode for several years now. I don't feel sorry for myself. I chose to be a teacher knowing full well that I could make more money doing something else. I married a teacher knowing that we would never be rolling in the dough. I do feel lucky to have a job and a home when so many people have lost theirs. I am not unsympathetic to the idea of everybody sacrificing during the economic turmoil.
However, I do feel that my family and I have given more than our share and it's time to try some other measures to improve our struggling economy. I'm doing more than my share and from where I sit, others are not.
I've "tightened my belt" for the past fifteen years or more on my job. My workload has increased, my class size has nearly doubled (and is scheduled to increase again next year.) I've had to deal with less support, less programs, less supplies for many years. My pay has been frozen or I've gotten a whopping one percent increase more often than I can count. My district had eight "budget reduction days" resulting in a 4% pay decrease for this year alone, and the budget looks even bleaker next year as stimulus funds have run out. Unfortunately my bills have not decreased or frozen the same as my pay.
I lost 30% of my pension when the public employees retirement system was supposedly "fixed" about eight years ago. It didn't matter that there were several years when we took benefits instead of raises, and I just had to handle that. My biggest investment, my home, has lost a good percentage of its value not because my husband or I did anything unwise, but simply because of the greedy mistakes of other people. I've had to just accept that too.
My son and his wife and two children have had to move back in with my husband and me, due to financial problems caused by medical bills because of their crappy medical insurance. They thought they had coverage, but were left with thousands of dollars to pay themselves after the birth of their first child. This, combined with outstanding school loans and a tough job market where good paying jobs are non-existent has put them over the edge. It's hard seeing your child feel like a failure when he's just trying out his wings as an adult, and he's done nothing but work hard and try to support his family.
My husband's proud father has needed our help the past few years too. Since his wife died, he has struggled to make ends meet due to the increasing cost of his health care and medicine and the rise in cost for his care facility. Most of his small pension and social security go towards his health care. Never in his long life as a breadwinner did he expect to need help just to survive. He's embarrassed to need help from his children even though we are happy to give it. It isn't how he wants to end his days on this earth.
I'm not saying that I shouldn't have to do any of these things. I realize that times are hard right now. I'm glad my husband and I can help our family members and I'm sure I would do that even if times were good. I know that it's stretching us to the breaking point financially, and delaying the possibility of our own retirement, but my family is worth it to me and there's nothing I wouldn't do for them.
But what I can't stomach any more of is the constant rhetoric of our leaders who blame the very people who are struggling. These leaders don't mind the idea of shutting down the government as long as they get their own pay. I'm sick of hearing how there's no support for a better health care plan while government leaders have a really great health care plan of their own. I'm tired of hearing how we need to tackle entitlement programs in order to keep our country solvent even though I know that it's only in trouble because those very same leaders raided it. I've been paying into Social Security since I was sixteen. I'm over the age of 55, so if Social Security gets "fixed" I supposedly won't be affected. But I'm very skeptical of the idea that once everyone under 55 has to make do with less that they wouldn't suddenly decide it's fair to go after mine too. Besides I don't think it's fair for a 50 year old to have paid in all these years and suddenly have it yanked out from under him.
I really don't mind shared sacrifice. I'm sick of politicians saying one thing and doing another. I want to see them actually do their job and try to solve problems instead of just paying lip service to the idea. If it really is important for us to lower the deficit, then I'd like to see our leaders do these things:
1. Cut defense spending. I don't think anybody actually believes we need to spend more than all other countries combined on the military. I believe there would be broad support for cutting military spending and getting out of costly and money draining wars.
2. Close corporate tax loopholes. They could even cut the corporate tax rates if they want as long as they make it so that all corporations actually pay taxes. Corporations should not be making obscene profits while hard working Americans are unemployed and homeless due to no fault of their own.
3. Make Wall Street pay for their financial misdeeds. I don't really care if anybody goes to jail or not, but Wall Street should not be making record profits while my family and millions like us are working hard and struggling just to make ends meet.
4. Actually tackle the health care problem. So many people I know are in financial trouble due to being uninsured or underinsured. So many other countries spend less than we do on healthcare yet we refuse to really try to make things better. I believe that single payer will eventually happen one way or another. I don't see how health care costs can just continue to climb and climb. If I were a leader right now, I'd want to be on the forefront of this change and get to take credit for it. Where are the heroes we need?
5. Let the Bush Tax Cuts expire. I think I might be a little worried to be one of the top one percent or even five percent who keep greedily piling up more money and getting more and more tax breaks. Have they never read any history? I'm seriously worried about what might happen in our country if the gap in income doesn't reverse at some point. It seems to me that the republicans and democrats need to get their act together or there will be a grass roots revolution to force the change we need. I do think the change will come at some point. Hopefully it will be peaceful, but I'm starting to worry. If I were a leader of our country, I'd want to be one of the agents of that change instead of being one of the leaders who gets thrown out by an angry populace. We need to listen to the message in countries like Egypt and not think it could never happen here.
6. Somebody actually needs to focus on creating jobs. I don't know if it would be by taking the money we're spending on wars and healthcare and using it to create jobs, or by creating tax incentives for companies that actually hire, or by creating incentives that would stop the outsourcing of good jobs, but somebody needs to really care about jobs. It doesn't feel like anybody is. I'm not talking about low wage jobs. I'm talking about jobs with wages that people can actually survive on. I'd like to see a real investment in new sources of energy, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and education. I believe these would be investments that would pay off in our future.
I'm so sick of leaders just talking about solving problems instead of actually doing it. I'm sick of them focusing on issues that have very little if anything to do with the real problems. I'm tired of the effort to divide everybody and get people worked up instead of working on things we actually agree on. As far as I'm concerned, once our leaders have tried any or all of these measures they can talk to me about tightening my belt.