Personal Responsibility

It’s reassuring to know our elected officials take the time to gather all the facts before casting their votes on issues that can directly affect all of us. Take freshmen Congresswoman, Nancy Boyda for instance. It’s good to know she already knows everything there is to know about the war in Iraq. Why else would she walk out in the middle of three star General John Keane’s Iraqi update? Surely she’s not playing politics with the war, she claims to be above such childish stunts. It’s probably just me, but it looked like a play straight out of the Pelosi, Reid handbook. Is it any wonder that congress’s approval rating is hovering around 19%. When you’re less popular than Bush, you’re in real trouble.
What exactly have the Democrats accomplished since regaining power? Oh yeah, endless investigations. Take the firings of the U.S. attorney’s for instance. Regardless of what you think of Bush, he was well within his legal rights to make such a move. The Democrats have acknowledged this. But they continue to harass everyone in this administration, hammering them with the same questions over and over again. Different Senators will ask them the exact same questions, only they’ll rephrase it in an attempt to trip them up. Once someone gives a little different version of something they said to someone else three or four years ago, they’re a liar. And lying to Congress is a crime. You’re going to prison. Think I’m exaggerating? Watch C-Span sometime.
You have to give them credit though. By raising the minimum wage they’ll end poverty in no time. That is, unless you happen to be one of the thousands that end losing their jobs because their employer had to make cuts in order to stay in business.
Who do you think the real winner here is? Let’s say you’re raising a family of four on $17,000 a year. Now what are you going to make, $20,000? And because of this, everything is going to go up. What have you gained? Nothing. So who wins here? The Government. The more you earn, the more taxes you pay. With your additional wages, the government will collect a little more of your weekly paycheck. A few more dollars might not seem like much, but multiply that by a few million paychecks and eventually you start talking real money. Everything they do revolves around taking more of our money. How about the universal healthcare talk going around? Do you really think the government can manage the healthcare of hundreds of millions of people? They want to make sure every child is covered. On the surface it sounds like an honorable thing, after all it’s for the “children.” They cry that it’s our responsibility to make sure all children are covered, and to do otherwise would be a disgrace.
You’re going to think I’m just a heartless old man here. But why is it my responsibility to make sure these kids are covered by healthcare? At what point is it the responsibility of the parents? They can’t afford health insurance because they work for minimum wage. In my view, this is a choice they’ve made themselves.
I read a letter to the editor a couple years ago that dealt with this exact topic. The writer said people live in poverty because they choose to. At the time I thought his comments were out of line. But you know what? He was right.
Of course you can’t raise a family on a minimum wage job. Everyone knows that. So why do people try? A lot of them can’t get a decent job because they dropped out of school or because they won’t put down the crack pipe long enough to pass a drug test. Why is this my problem?
Here’s the deal. There are decent jobs out there, but you have to get off the couch to find them. At some point people are going to have to stand up and take responsibility for themselves. This old guy is sick and tired of everyone having their hands in my wallet.
Kevin McGinty can be reached at: kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net