The House Republicans want us to decide whether we should under fund education, or health care for seniors on Medicare and Medicaid. Our society should never be placed in a position to have to make such a huge decision. The only reason this is happening is due to Congressman Ryan wanting to continue tax cuts for the mega-wealthy. This is totally unacceptable.

Many of the older members of our society have paid Medicare taxes for decades. We have a moral and implied contractual obligation to make sure the members receive the services they have pre-paid to receive. Baby Boomers have had their money used to pay for their parents’ Medicare and to provide partial funding for their own. This is a fact of life. Ryan and his fellow Republican representatives do not understand the obligation that the withholding of these taxes requires.

The quest of the Republicans to continually give huge tax breaks to the mega-wealthy, like Mitt Romney is reprehensible. It is also as immoral to defund higher education for our young people to give Mitt Romney and the other 1% of top earners obscene tax breaks. We need a more highly educated youth to develop technology for the twenty-first century. We need more health care professionals to care for our aging society. We need to have the best engineers and technology experts to develop the new products and services our society will require for our nation’s continued growth and viability as a world economic leader.

Shorting education funding for trade school students and university students will result in the United States losing global economic competition. We need to make sure students with the intellectual and vocational ability have the required education to succeed individually as the most productive members of society they can be, while providing the know-how and ability to drive our economy in a positive direction.

Congressman Ryan’s approach is far too expensive and draconian as it makes our society choose between throwing grandma and grandpa under the bus, or their grandchildren so the wealthiest can sit on mountains of money. That money has never trickled down in the past thirty-two years, but our education rating in the world has plummeted from number one to number twenty-six.

I am proud to be a Democrat who advocates for the less fortunate in our society. I just fail to understand how any compassionate person could endorse Ryan’s outrageously greedy and cynical plan to give the mega-wealthy even more.

BY

Mark Challis