So wrote Ms. Kuster, past and quasi-announced progressive Democratic candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's 2nd District, in the Keene Sentinel recently.
She was taking about Medicare, and current Representative Charles Bass' vote to dismantle it, handing out vouchers to seniors instead.
My 87-year-old mother-in-law lives on her own in a small apartment on a widow's pension and her Social Security. A few weeks ago, she was hospitalized for a few days with pneumonia, and her hospital stay was covered by Medicare...
In order to pay for a large tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the Republican budget would replace the successful Medicare program with a system of private insurance vouchers, leaving tomorrow's seniors without adequate coverage when healthcare costs inevitably continue to rise...
... ending Medicare as we know it in order to make room for corporate tax breaks? No way. That's not the America I want to pass on to my sons. It's not the country that Nanny worked hard for her whole life, nor the country that is looking out for her now...
Ann Kuster barely lost -- by less than 2% -- to Charles Bass in November of 2010, the victim of a terrible insanity that swept through America seven months ago. In November of 2012 New Hampshire will have a chance to rectify that dreadful mistake. Unlike other Democrats you may be asked to support, Kuster has in the past election taken unequivocal positions on
Now she's taken a strong stand against the Republicans' idiotic plan to make her grandmother rely on private health insurance (but they're such nice people, those private insurers -- they would never deny a claim...), and other insane programs Republicans continue to support:
I am a frugal Yankee, and I do believe we need to cut spending when it is truly wasteful. We can find prime candidates for those cuts in the billions of subsidies for oil companies, the corporate tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and the billions more spent on redundant weapons systems that our military leaders have identified as wasteful and not needed. These are all expenditures that Bass has voted to support in his seven terms in Congress -- including his votes as recently as this winter.
If you want Democrats like this, and not like this, you might consider supporting Kuster.