[Left and Right] Why This Election Matters So Much and So Little (Part 1)

As November 2012 creeps up on us this might just be remembered as the most important election of our lifetimes. The reason being is that what happens over the next four years may just be the most important in our nation’s future. The problem is that both candidates for the office of President are so painfully out of touch with America that it is very conceivable that they just may screw it up worse than they already have.

For the sake of this article let’s just go ahead an make the assumption that President Obama is going to be running against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The problem with the both of them is that they are basically the same person. They are both so out of touch that they may just not even understand everyday people and this can guide their policy decisions to disaster.

Let’s take a look at a few of the issues that the both of them will screw up and take us all down with them.

Taxes (Obama): President Obama has made it clear that he wants to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 per year. This should be an issue he owns because so few people make that much money and almost everyone supports the tax increases (even some of those people who make over $250,000). The problem with Obama’s policy on taxes is that he doesn’t want to take the money he would raise on the tax increase an use it to set America on a sane financial course. He wants to claim that the revenues will help him spend bucketloads of tax payer money, far exceeding what he will raise from the wealthy. The Center for Taxation, a non-profit analyst group estimates that the tax increases Obama wants will raise $47 billion dollars over the next 10 years. The same group estimate that the national debt is projected to climb by more than $7 TRILLION dollars in that same time period.

Taxes (Romney): Mitt Romney wants to do the opposite of President Obama. He thinks the best thing to do for a country that is posting more than $1 trillion dollars a year in deficit spending is to cut everyone’s taxes. He also is allowing the sound byte to rule over common sense. 50% of the American people pay no income taxes at all so his tax cut will not affect them at all. The rest of the middle class will see less than $5,000 per year in tax reductions and in most cases significantly less than that. Yet Romney and his friends who are among the Super Wealthy will see a tax cut of tens of millions of dollars. I am not a fan of taxing the rich just because they are rich but doesn’t it get to a point where they have to at least pay something? Romney himself is worth more than $200 million dollars and he paid less than 15% of his income in taxes this past year. Isn’t that a problem when the system allows him to do this at all? Of course it does.

Healthcare (Obama): President Obama was one of the first Presidents in decades to fundamentally want to change the way healthcare works in America. Before his second year in office was complete he managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. I applaud the President for going after the issue and for even passing something. The problem is that in his zeal to get something passed, he abandoned what he knows the country needs (single payer system) and instead threw all of us to the wolves. He is forcing us to buy a product from the same companies that have been raising the cost of medicine for years and screwing us at every turn. He thinks he put adequate safeguards into the bill that the government can protect us from the insurance companies. The problem is that sooner or later with the trillions of dollars these companies are going to make if the individual mandate is held up in court, the insurance companies will be able to get their lobbyists to change the rules to benefit them even more.

Healthcare (Romney):Romney’s plan is simply this. He doesn’t have one! he has vowed to make repealing Obamacare his number 1 priority but he has no idea what to replace it with. So after the insurance companies have been raising rates by up to 350% in anticipation of the Obamacare mandatory services, the inability to exclude people for preexisting conditions and having to keep children on their parent’s policies until they are 26, they will be free to drop all those provisions and do you think they will drop prices…yeah right.

These are just two of the issues I will get into right now. Please check my column in the future as I get into more of the reasons why these two candidates are wrong for America and what we can do to take our country back.

Left and Right is a three times weekly column by Inquistr writer H. Scott English examining the hottest political issues of the day, the candidates running for public office and the 2012 elections.