Suddenly Senior
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A selection from Frank Kaiser's columns
HOW SENIORS CAN HELP
VICTIMS OF KATRINA, RITA & CONGRESS
by Frank Kaiser
Across Washington, Republican congressional heads spin like Linda
Blair's as their "drown the government in a bathtub" doctrine meets
"hundreds of billions needed to help victims Who knew there'd be
such a stink over a few thousand New Orleanians apparently left to
die after Hurricane Katrina hit? Most were poor. Perhaps better off
dead, anyway, if I interpret the president's mother correctly.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert's declaration that rebuilding
hurricane-ravaged New Orleans "doesn't make sense," like those fuzzy
Abscam photos of Congressmen taking bribes, has caught the true
spirit of today's Congress. After all, New Orleans is/was a
Democratic town full of African Americans. That's why the city
didn't get the infrastructure assistance it needed to withstand
Katrina in the first place.
Just Republican bad luck that meddling liberal news media stirred
the nation's sympathy. Now we've got to pay the piper.
So where will all those needed billions come from? We're already
suffocating under a $331-billion deficit for the year.
Democrats have suggested - perhaps with their fingers crossed
behind them - that Congress give up political pork for a year. Like
that quarter-billion dollar "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. Of
course, Republicans are having none of it. Pork is the American Way,
after all.
Maybe members of Congress will give back their recent $3,100
raises.
Never mind.
How about repealing Bush's tax cuts for super-rich Americans?
Now don't go crackers on me! Just one year's suspension would
return $225-billion to the treasury. That would cover most of the
cost of rebuilding New Orleans.
Or, let's bring our troops home from Iraq. As the late Rear
Admiral Eugene Carroll said, "There is an old military doctrine
called the First Rule of Holes: If you find yourself stuck in one,
stop digging." That would save a couple hundred billion.
Personally, I believe we should have thought about this before
Katrina hit.
What would it have taken? Five minutes of the president's
vacation for him to call the Rev. Pat Robertson? Robertson, you'll
remember, single-handedly diverted a hurricane from Virginia Beach.
Why not use his awesome powers to divert Katrina and Rita, perhaps
sending them to the Yucatan where only poor Mexicans would be
inconvenienced?
They're used to it.
With all the denials, delays, and debunking going around, it
seems to me that some maturity is needed here. We seniors have
experience in these matters. We've lived long enough to have
experience in damn near everything.
Cancel the Medicare Drug Bill
Let's see, we could have a million-geezer clean-up crew bus to
Houston. But with all the bathroom stops we'd have to make along the
way, we'd be lucky to cross the Texas border by 2008.
Here's an idea! Suggest that Congress cancel the Medicare drug
bill set to
go
into affect in January. Even keeping in the part benefiting the
poor, killing the rest of that bill would save our country at least
$600- to $900-billion.
This clever ploy would make us geezers look oh-so altruistic
while in reality saving us all from going bananas puzzling over the
choice of which HMO we want to pick our pockets. Like Representative
Lynn Westmoreland, Republican of Georgia, said, "Most seniors are
not going to know what to do with [the Medicare drug benefit]
anyway."
What I like about this gambit is that we seniors lose nothing.
The bill benefits only the pharmaceutical and insurance companies
that wrote it. Yet, by "giving up" our long-sought drug "benefit,"
we could insist that, for fairness sake, Congress cancel the
billions given to cash-rich, profit-gouging corporations - like the
recent $14-billion donation to the oil industry.
We might even get those Washington boys and girls to stop
allowing US companies to "headquarter" in Bermuda to avoid paying
their fair share of taxes.
Push some, and I'll bet we could get Congress to restore to the
VA budget the billions necessary to care for our wounded returning
from Iraq.
Putting $600- 900-billion on the table turns heads, even in
Washington.
Who knows? It could be the start of something big.
Like getting back our country.
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Have a great week, everyone!
Frank Kaiser
frank@suddenlysenior.com
http://www.suddenlysenior.com
_______________________________________________________________________________
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
Free
your heart from hatred.
Free your mind from worries.
Live simply.
Give more.
Expect less.
