Tonight and other nights, Fox News is covering how it “pays more to be on welfare” than to work at an “entry level” job, (8/21/13, Study: Welfare pays more than minimum wage in most states), you know where Republicans are going with this, “policies that discourage work are bad for the recipients.” Instead of talking about the necessity of closing loopholes to finally make good on their notoriously inaccurate “trickle down,” argument that giving tax breaks to the rich helps them hire people (you know, rather than keep their money or hide it offshore), instead of talking about paying a living wage to workers (you know, then those rich folk won’t be able to hire as many workers), they argue that “strengthening” work requirements of welfare or capping welfare is the answer.
News flash…The Republican Party must do the opposite of what their instincts tell them in order to persuade a single American who is not part of their extremist base. Sorry guys, you’ve gone too far. The answer to unemployment that persists, the answer to limitless health care cost increases, the answer to the widening gap between rich and poor in this country is NOT, again, NOT to decimate our current system and remove any rules assuming that some imaginary “free market” will sort out our difficulties.
All that Republican nuttiness has done is strengthen Democrats, emboldening the President and others to go to their nutty extremes, e.g. amnesty for illegals through the back-door of executive order.
In order to agree with Republican viewpoints, even the most anti-Democratic person in the US is beginning to realize that you have to not only suspend disbelief, but you have to discount your own experience.
Here is the single most important challenge that diehard Republicans must make for their anti-Obamacare “leaders,” challenge them to fully inform you about their own health insurance AND demand that it be neither employer sponsored, which in the case of government employees means taxpayer sponsored, nor include any public health insurance option through Medicare, Medicaid or Veteran’s benefits.
After this reality check, it’s time for the bolder move, get rid of the Tea Party Movement within your party, it has not and will not thankfully ever catch on with intelligent, thinking Americans.
