My letter to congress

Maybe I'll send it to the paper or something for LTTE or something.

To whom it may Concern:

While you sit in your fancy office, collecting your paycheck every week or month, and you go about your lives in basic stability in the knowledge that at least until the next election you will continue collecting your paycheck and living in the same accoutrements regardless of how the economy is doing, please consider this. Today, in homes all across this country, there are families who are struggling. Sure, you talk about those struggling Americans all the time, but really think about them as you sit in your office, or drive around in your car. Today, folks go to work, if they are lucky to have a job and hold their breath praying that they don’t get a pink slip. They’ve already watched some of their co-workers pack their boxes and empty their offices. They have worked their lives following the rules. Doing what you are supposed to do. And yet, that isn’t going to save them from this quicksand that they feel forming under their feet.

I have a sister who lost her job a couple of months ago. She was working in one of those small businesses you talk about a lot. This business was dependant on the needs of other businesses in the area. Making signs and designing graphics and such. Business cards. But they had to lay off my sister along with at least one other person. Now my sister sits at home and tries to find a job, but there aren’t any out there.

There have been tough times. I have had tough times. We are used to tough times. I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself if we weren’t struggling to get by. And I am sure a lot of Americans live this same uncertain life in normal times. But this is not like the hard times we’ve ever known. It’s like a cascade of job losses feeding off of other job losses and culminating in even more job losses. With no end in sight.

Where are you, that you can honestly sit in your fancy offices and ‘debate’ the merits of a stimulus bill as you do. For each facet is important. The states are struggling under the burden of each new unemployment’s numbers and the influx of people who now need help of some kind from them. Of course, this does not affect you, because you still have a job and get paid. You are not the one standing in an unemployment line or trying to look through the paper to find something to keep you afloat.

Please, look a constituent in the face who has done everything they were supposed to do and are standing in this situation. No job. About to lose their home, maybe. No health insurance. Please, look at them and tell them that that job that will be created by the digitalization of medical records is pork and not job creation. Please tell that family who lost their healthcare along with their paycheck that aid to the states is wasteful spending. A family with kids who may need medical care.

I have been a parent of a child without health insurance. I have sat with that pit in my stomach as I debated whether it is just a cold or just the flu or something else. Have you? Have you ever had to put off seeing the doctor because you didn’t have insurance and just couldn’t afford a trip to the doctor?

What kind of country do we live in? Our leaders don’t even live in the same world that the rest of us do. We toil and struggle just to keep from going under, while our congress twiddles its fingers and debates abstraction. And what does it matter to them, really? They get their paychecks and their healthcare. And they have their houses and their car…. And what do we get for all of that?

Perhaps if you lived in this situation, maybe you would have more of a sense of urgency to get something done. Maybe you wouldn’t be so flippant about what you purport to be pork spending or Christmas tree stuff. Maybe, if you were about to lose your healthcare, or have your pay cut, or on the verge of losing everything you had worked for your entire life you might have a better sense of just how dire things are.

We are America. And we tell ourselves that we are the greatest country without any proof or verification of such. We would rather let our citizens strangle on the rope we hung with our economic policies then to actually do anything to help them.

Please, I ask you to look at your neighbor. Maybe a family member. Somewhere not far from you there are people who are on the verge of the abyss. Do you want to be the one to push them over the edge? Or pull them back onto solid ground.

a while back, if anyone wants to make calls to the media.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7334714

we'll see how that goes.