HOPING OBAMA PROVIDES A TIMETABLE FOR HIS FULL AGENDA
So many people are giving advice to His Eloquence, President-elect Obama, I wondered what advice I could possibly offer. The answer arrived after my wife and I detoured home from SEA-TAC airport on New Year’s Day to avoid getting stuck in storms closed mountain passes. We advised each other to slow down as we sloshed through the Columbia Gorge and Satis Pass. Nine hours later we arrived under our starlit clear skies along with my advice.
While our nation chants, “Yes we can!” and hopes for progress, my advice is we need a clear timetable for this long and tough journey if we hope to chant “Yes we did.”
In four years my hope would be for a cooperative leadership with more employment, universal health care in a fiscally sound and monitored economic system with comprehensive immigration reform, all of which provide us the strength and resources to collaborate with other nations for peacekeeping and humanitarian programs.. That may not rise to the eloquence of His Eloquence, but hopes soaring on wings without fiscal realism will burn and crash like the young Greek god Icarus who flew too close to the sun.
Right now we have advice in abundance, but no timetable with tough choices. MoveOn.org, the progressive membership organization, collected over 800,000 votes for guidance on lobbying this Congress. The winner is universal health care. In December Obama volunteers organized support for health care reform through home discussion groups.
Not content to just listen, Obama urged congressional leaders to pass his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. His eloquence insisted we can create three million new jobs with “strategic investments,” “vigorous oversight and strict accountability” along with direct tax relief to 95 percent of American workers (and us retirees).
Look carefully, these are familiar political promises: more jobs and fewer taxes. His are different: they’re eloquent.
He warns us “we must restore fiscal responsibility and make tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down.” But tough choices are postponed until after we get direct tax relief and/or one of the three million new jobs. We used this strategy public ally and privately for twenty years. Let’s commit to fiscal responsibility on a timetable.
When would we implement universal health care? He included it only as fiscal stimulus investments to “computerize our health care system to cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help reduce health care costs.” How about health care reform after we can pay for it with the money saved from these investments?
He concluded by saying, “There is no reason we can’t do this.” Yes there is, Your Eloquence: money. Real money.
Commit us to tough choices somewhere along the same timetable that includes universal health care, a green economy, immigration reform, reduced military conflicts and greater collaboration for international peace. We can commit to long, tough journeys. We prefer those to closed down hope.
While our nation chants, “Yes we can!” and hopes for progress, my advice is we need a clear timetable for this long and tough journey if we hope to chant “Yes we did.”
In four years my hope would be for a cooperative leadership with more employment, universal health care in a fiscally sound and monitored economic system with comprehensive immigration reform, all of which provide us the strength and resources to collaborate with other nations for peacekeeping and humanitarian programs.. That may not rise to the eloquence of His Eloquence, but hopes soaring on wings without fiscal realism will burn and crash like the young Greek god Icarus who flew too close to the sun.
Right now we have advice in abundance, but no timetable with tough choices. MoveOn.org, the progressive membership organization, collected over 800,000 votes for guidance on lobbying this Congress. The winner is universal health care. In December Obama volunteers organized support for health care reform through home discussion groups.
Not content to just listen, Obama urged congressional leaders to pass his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. His eloquence insisted we can create three million new jobs with “strategic investments,” “vigorous oversight and strict accountability” along with direct tax relief to 95 percent of American workers (and us retirees).
Look carefully, these are familiar political promises: more jobs and fewer taxes. His are different: they’re eloquent.
He warns us “we must restore fiscal responsibility and make tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down.” But tough choices are postponed until after we get direct tax relief and/or one of the three million new jobs. We used this strategy public ally and privately for twenty years. Let’s commit to fiscal responsibility on a timetable.
When would we implement universal health care? He included it only as fiscal stimulus investments to “computerize our health care system to cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help reduce health care costs.” How about health care reform after we can pay for it with the money saved from these investments?
He concluded by saying, “There is no reason we can’t do this.” Yes there is, Your Eloquence: money. Real money.
Commit us to tough choices somewhere along the same timetable that includes universal health care, a green economy, immigration reform, reduced military conflicts and greater collaboration for international peace. We can commit to long, tough journeys. We prefer those to closed down hope.
Posted by JSR at 1/8/2009 10:12 AM 
Categories: Wealth,Build Better Communities,Politics,Common Sense
Categories: Wealth,Build Better Communities,Politics,Common Sense
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