THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW
BY RUSSELL TURNER
SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES
One of my parents favorite sayings is 'You never know what a person is going through until you have walked a mile in his shoes.' We humans have a bad habit of caring less about what others have to deal with as long as everything is going fine in our little corner of the world. The problems that we are facing in our country today are due in large part to our citizens not taking an active role in our elections and the people who occupy the offices that pass the laws we all have to live with. I was very young when then-President Lyndon Johnson pushed forward his Great Society plan that was supposed to eliminate poverty in the United States. Instead of eliminating poverty, it seems to be expanding. We have bankrupted our nation and run up a 22 trillion dollar debt and the sad part is the cycle of increasing debt is not slowing down. Another huge problem looming is the millions of Americans who are entering the golden years with little to no retirement funds to live off of.
40% of Americans can't cover an unexpected $400 emergency expense. 57% have less than $1,000 in savings. A third of baby boomers—the generation currently retiring—have NOTHING put away for retirement. According to a recent report 25% of private US pension funds, the pools of capital that pay out retirement benefits, will go bankrupt in the next decade. Public local, state, and federal pension funds are in even worse shape: $7 TRILLION short on what they promised to pay retired government workers. For Americans who have put their faith in Social Security I am afraid that they are due for a rude awaking. Even the Social Security administration has admitted that the trust fund is $50 trillion underfunded, and will run out of money by 2034. When that happens you will see payouts cut, raising the retirement age, or both. And even that is only a short term solution.
There are some good people in Congress; but it would be funny, if it wasn't so hypocritical, when we hear the liberal socialist politicians claim to feel the pain of the average working people in this nation. These tax-and-spend liberals, regardless of what political party they belong to, have given us a national debt of $22 trillion, bubbles in housing and student loans, and failing to address a broken Social Security system. They also wasted billions on things like a worthless Obamacare website and defending Congressmen from sexual assault lawsuits. Let us not forget them fighting like children during a government shutdown while millions of Americans were out of work.
It might interest you to know about the pension system that people in congress are receiving at taxpayer expense. The annual salary for a member of congress is $174,000. Each retired member can start collecting a pension at age 62 if they've spent just five years in Congress, and they'll collect 80% of their $174,000 annual salary. That's almost $140,000 a year, for the rest of their lives… for five years of service. Whenever you hear the likes of Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Cortez talk about creating their brand of utopia, ask yourself how they would act if they had to walk in the shoes the rest of us have to wear.
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