Published in the Towns County Hearld Oct. 10, 2020
Dear Editor,
Once
again we see an irresponsible President attempting to corrupt our political
system through whatever means he can devise and regardless of the
consequences. President Trump’s latest
effort at vote buying is a plan to spend $7 billion of public money on issuing
$200 drug discount cards to 33 million of the 44 million seniors on Medicare.
If you
are a senior on Medicare, as I am, you should be incensed at this insult to our
intelligence and integrity. I hope I
speak for all seniors in Towns County when I say, “MY VOTE WILL NOT BE BOUGHT.”
His
plan to issue discount cards flies in the face of good policy (“A one-time
savings card will neither provide lasting help, nor advance the fundamental
reforms necessary to help seniors better afford their medicines,” according to
a spokesman for the drug industry trade group PhRMA.). But that’s not the primary reason for concern.
It also
reverses long-standing Republican consensus on free markets because it relies
for its funding on savings from a future program that would tie drug prices
paid by Medicare in the United States to prices paid in other countries. When Democrats have proposed such a linkage
to make drugs more affordable for seniors, Republicans and the drug industry
have fought it off in favor of allowing the marketplace to set prices.
Finally,
it follows a pattern of debt financing where the promise of future savings is
used to pay for current spending. It is
a pattern most often used to explain away the impact of tax cuts without a
concurrent reduction in spending on existing programs, and is the reason our
national debt (currently at more than $24 TRILLION) is approaching parity with
the GDP for the first time since World War II.
I am a
fiscally conservative Democrat. A point
of pride is that I worked for a Member of the U.S. House Budget Committee at
the one time in recent history when Congress not only produced a balanced
budget but actually generated surpluses and began paying down the national
debt. One of the things we fought
against was the tendency for some, both Democrats and Republicans, to throw a
party with unrealized gains (that is spending public money while relying on
future savings to pay the costs).
I do
not enjoy writing these letters, but I feel compelled because the outrages of
the current President will not cease.
But, more than that, a strong two-party system is critical to reaching
sound government policies that can unite our country. For that reason, I write to head off the
demise of the Republican Party before it is usurped by its Trumpican wing. Its demise is brought closer by this latest
vote-buying proposal that demonstrates the Trumpicans do not hold any
Republican values as sacred. Instead, its
adherents center their position on the deification of Donald J. Trump, a man
without morals, conscience, integrity, love of country, or respect for our
Constitution.
David Plunkett
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