The New Slavery? part five
Thanks to The National Review for their hard work.
Here comes 20,000,000 new government jobs…………..The New Slavery.
$89,000,000,000 for Medicaid (Healthcare for everyone? I certainly hope so with a budget this big. For profit medicine was/is a bad idea. You should not have to be rich to be healthy, in this country or anywhere else.)
$30,000,000,000 for COBRA insurance extension (Do you know what COBRA insurance is? I think most of us don’t. And the people who do know what it is don’t always know what their options are. Let’s hope some of this money goes to increasing awareness and understanding of the program and how it works as well as expanding the eligibility of our currently unemployed workforce.)
$36,000,000,000 for expanded unemployment benefits (With more people losing their jobs everyday, we are going to need this. I’m just afraid even this huge amount isn’t going to be enough. People have kids to feed and bills to pay whether they have a job or not.)
$20,000,000,000 for food stamps (This is another one, besides unemployment benefits, that I don’t have any problem with the amount. I just hope it’s enough for all the families with kids to feed. I know that food stamps have saved my own family plenty of times when the economy sucks and we’re having trouble making ends meet. Hell, just eliminating the tax on groceries would be a huge relief for a lot of people in the country right now. I remember first moving here to Oklahoma, going grocery shopping and being charged tax on the food was like, “What the hell? Who charges taxes at the grocery store?” Growing up in California and Texas, we never paid taxes at the grocery store and were stunned that we had to pay taxes on food here in Oklahoma. It’s ridiculous. Farmers are taxed for growing food, then it gets taxed at the processing level, again at the shipping stage, then the retailer is taxed before taxing you again at the register. So, let’s see, that is a total of 5 times that the same product gets taxed before reaching your dining room table. Ridiculous, no wonder everything costs so much.)
$4,500,000,000 for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (I hope they spend it more wisely than in the past. I think one Katrina/New Orleans epic disaster is enough for the next several generations, don’t you? )
$850,000,000 for Amtrak (Maybe I’m a romantic, but I like the idea of trains. Electric over coal of course, and preferably green electric from renewable, sustainable sources. I think it was a mistake to abandon our rail system for the highways and would like to see some focus shifting back to trains. We still move a good amount of cargo by train, but I never see a passenger train coming through Tulsa. The closest train station is in Oklahoma City, two hours away. Would love to see one here. Taking a train ride is on my bucket list.)
We’ll look at a few more expenditures tomorrow…
Leave a Reply