What Do You Want Your Elected Representatives To Be Working On?
By EOM Contributor
We have so many important issues facing this country right now…what do you believe your politicians should be concentrating on?
What comes to my mind first is access to health care, including birth control. Access to affordable birth control reduces the number of abortions performed and we can all agree that is a good thing. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has many important parts. First of all, being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition! The ACA prevents insurers from charging women more for insurance than men. In some states, women were actually paying up to 70% more for insurance coverage than men. The ACA prevents insurers from denying coverage for a pre-existing condition (diabetes, high blood pressure…). The ACA also prevents insurers from dropping your coverage if you are diagnosed with a condition such as diabetes or cancer. These are all good things. There may be some kinks to work out, but the ACA is a valiant attempt to provide millions of Americans with access to health care.
What has Congress done since President Obama was re-elected? They have voted 37 TIMES TO REPEAL OBAMACARE! 37 times at a cost of $50 million dollars! Money well-spent, wouldn’t you agree? Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result. Yes, our elected representatives are officially insane!
Other issues that need our attention are job creation, tax parity, immigration reform, equal pay for equal work, the on-going violence against women in our society (and our military where our female soldiers need not fear being raped by the enemy, but do need to fear being raped by their fellow soldiers and commanding officers), and discrimination in housing and the workplace (women can be fired and evicted for being victims of domestic violence, and gays can be fired for being gay), and investment in our infrastructure (repairs of bridges and roads which would make travel safer and create jobs), just to name a few.
But what have they actually done? Well, I’ve mentioned the 37 failed votes to repeal the ACA. In addition to that, state by state women are losing their rights to determine what will happen with their own bodies (male politicians believing they know more about our health than women and physicians do). The House just approved a bill that would eliminate overtime pay. Republicans want to raise the student loan interest rate to 8.5%, more than Wall Street Banks pay. Now what would be the effect of these things? Students graduating from college will be saddled with even greater debt. I don’t see how that helps us. Women facing an unplanned pregnancy will be forced to have children they can’t afford to care for. Employees working more than 40 hours a week will get compensatory time, but at a rate of one hour to one hour, instead of pay at a rate of time and one half. Most people work overtime for the pay, not for more time off. I’m not seeing how that will help low-income families or anyone, for that matter.
Contact your elected representatives. Tell them to stop passing bills that only harm us and do something that actually helps us! And stop focusing on the reproductive lives of women!
Eye On Modesto 