Don’t mess with Social Security

The Republican representatives who ran for office last November saying that jobs were going to be their first priority have not brought up one jobs bill to be voted on. Now they are playing games with a fragile world economy and the lives of people who depend on Social Security to live.

The refusal to consider re-establishing the tax rate on the wealthy to what it was when we had a healthy economy at the expense of the average citizen shows exactly where their loyalties lie. The Bush tax cuts were to last 10 years. The 10 years are over. The tax cuts did nothing to benefit the economy of the United States. A small minority of the country would be inconvenienced by that re-establishment, but changes in Social Security and Medicare could be devastating to most seniors. The privatization of Medicare will mean the end of health care for seniors. It will make the millions of dollars spent by the health industry to the powers that be in Washington worth every penny and then some.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority party leader in the Senate, has said, “Making Obama a one-term President is my single most important political goal.” They are willing to gamble anything to that end. McConnell and John Boehner voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling when George W. Bush was president.

Let us not forget that all our elected officials have benefits that most of us could only dream of but we pay for. Most retirees now have no pension, a 401(k) plan that has seen great losses, houses that have lost a large percentage of their value and definitely need Medicare and Social Security.

We really need to let the representatives, who right now are representing only the people who paid for them to get into office, not the voters, and the senators that they should reassure the American public we will not be deprived of the safety net we have paid for all our working lives.

Janice Gargantiel

Batavia