Mr. President,
There are good ol' American solutions to our current problem. Like good ol' American solutions of yore, they're simple and direct.
You don't need a commission to solve a problem. Commissions are what you create when you want to ignore hard questions.
You simply need to lead. Try these suggestions on for size...
Through the benefits of public schools and state funded college, I got the advantage of a good education. I added to that a bit of creativity and hard work and now I'm what's being defined as wealthy. Of course, I don't feel wealthy--due overall economic insecurity and, due to the the frauds of the banksters, my 401(k) that I've been paying into for 30 years has grown at a bout the same amount of money in it as it would had I invested in my local credit union passbook savings account. Many of my neighbors have fallen on hard times and that worries me. All that said, I'm in comparatively good shape.
Mr. President, please raise my top marginal rate. I'll be OK. I wouldn't have what I do have without society. I owe you, America.
Thanks to access to better than average healthcare through my 'cadillac plan', I'll probably live longer than most. That makes it doubly odd that less than halfway through the year I quit paying Social Security taxes. That's not really true, I don't quit paying, I reach the cap.
Mr. President, please lift the cap on paying into Social Security. It's part of the social contract. American's don't move the goal just when we're about to reach it do we? On the playground, that would get you a black eye. Take a lesson from our kindergarteners on the fairness of that and do the right thing. Don't cut benefits or raise the payout age.
We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined, yet the threats facing us are from box cutters and home made bombs. We need to spend smarter, not spend more. I'm not afraid of an invasion or an air raid or a missile attack--why do we spend so much defending against those threats? They haven't existed for decades.
Mr. President, please cut the military dramatically. Start at 20% with a goal of getting to 50%. We'd still be spending more than any other nation on the planet.
And Mr. President, please don't get me started on cutting aid for veterans. We failed them once when we failed to prevent those wars. We can't fail them now as they come home, having done things and endured things we never should have asked them to.
Well sir, that oughta 'bout do it. It's a simple plan. It's an honest plan and a fair plan. Maybe it doesn't do everything that needs doing, but I think it does everything that needs doing now.
"By, of, and for the People" sir. That's what it's all about.