Can We Ever Quit Campaigning?

“Can we ever quit campaigning? There is not going to be another election until November of '06. What we ought to do is quit running ads and sit down and start figuring out how to solve this problem.”

Senator Mitch McConnell on Meet the Press – March 6 2005

Instead of complaining about Senator Durbin and the Democrats, McConnell should direct his comments to the Campaigner in Chief who’s leading an administration ‘barnstorming’ tour of the U.S. called “60 stops in 60 days”. The purpose of this non-election campaigning is to ‘educate’ the public about Social Security.

How much is this foolish obsession with killing Social Security costing us taxpayers?

Wouldn’t it seem that if there really was a crisis in Social Security, that the public would have ‘gotten it’ by now?

And what about those things that are either not being attended to or those that are being attended quietly in the shadows of the Social Security ‘crisis”.

How about the Bankruptcy Bill – which will most likely pass this week. Molly Ivins calls the origins of this bill “a gift to big bankers and credit card companies.” The two leading causes of bankruptcy are job loss and medical catastrophe. Bankruptcies brought on by medical catastrophe have risen by 2200% for the period 1981 to 2001, according to a study authored by two Harvard medical professors. According to the same study, 90% of medical bankruptcies occur in the middle class. Despite the rhetoric of Repuglican supporters of this bill, families that file for medical bankruptcy have undergone severe hardship previous to filing.

The thrust of this bill, which has been a priority for the credit card industry for at least 7 years, is to make it much more difficult to escape crushing debt through bankruptcy, regardless of the cause. Someone with severe medical problems, a catastrophic accident or job loss would be treated the same as someone who amassed huge gambling losses. Democratic amendments that would have protected home equity for the elderly or added protection for military veterans have been defeated. Even victims of identity theft would be more vulnerable under the new law.