"Let us put our minds together and see what we life we can make for our children."
– Sitting Bull
We think we are so smart. As a Microsoft-certified programmer by trade, I love technology. I remember as if it were yesterday how the Compact Disc revolutionized the music business. It took a sagging sector of the economy to new heights and turned millions of audiophiles into collectors. A decade or so later, the DVD had a similar effect on the home video market.
I am an eager participant in our technology-based society. I have not one but two personal computers. I have thousands of songs in the MP3 format. I use my cell phone much more frequently than my land line. However, I also keep my feet firmly on the ground in remembering that technology is no panacea for some of our bleakest woes.
Let's take infant mortality for an example. We lead much of the world in this gruesome and tragic statistic. How can this be? We have programs like WIC to make sure that young mothers can feed their baby a balanced diet. We have food stamps to make sure that every American has a fair shot at a decent meal.
We are high on the list of nations in which we lose our most vulerable -- seven American babies die for every 1,000 live births before reaching their first birthday. We are terrible not just compared against our industrialized allies, though. We also lose more infants than many countries which can't even guarantee access to potable water for more than half their people!
What’s going on here? After all, the United States has more neonatologists and newborn intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. That's a good thing, a very good thing! Yet, we lose more newborns than those allies do, many more per capita.
>> The answer, of course, is the larger failure of our healthcare system and wage base. Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom have universal coverage. We should, too.
HR676 is the right approach. I support it vigorously but we cannot stop there. We should have the fewest infant deaths of anywhere on earth. In order to do that, we must assure not just that parents can bring their children in for screenings and receive proper medicine and nutrition. No, we must assure that young mothers can afford to take time off to go to the doctor, starting from the day they learn that they are expecting a child.
A national living wage standard is the most important addition which Congress needs to pass. Sadly, I don't see it happening this term. I pledge, then, to introduce it as legislation when I arrive on Capitol Hill. At the same time, I will press hard to revise the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide for paid time off for mothers. It is the very least which a moral nation can do.
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Paid for and approved by Corbett For Congress