The Public Debt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Public Debt - Essay Example As the paper declares a report issued in April, 2005, by the National Center for Children in Poverty, cites 40 percent of America’s children live in families with poverty level incomes. The Bush Administration, the report says, and Congress has called for dramatic cuts in a program that is already struggling to meet the needs of the low-income families currently on the program. The program, which received increased funding during the 1990s to facilitate the Welfare to Work goals, continued to turn away thousands of needy due to limited resources. Medicaid, a federally sponsored program that works in conjunction with state resources to provide healthcare to needy families, would also be dramatically cut as part of the existing proposals. This essay stresses that congressmen and women enjoy a great many perks at the public expense. According to the National Taxpayer’s Union Foundation, â€Å"Members elected in 1984 and thereafter pay 1.3 percent towards the pension and 6.2 percent to Social Security. This only compensates for about 1/5 of the typical lifetime benefit. We cover the rest as taxpayers.† Why should our lawmakers be held to a different standard than the people struggling to support them? The answer is, they should not, and they should contribute to the retirement and Social Security systems like any other worker in America. When we have lawmakers who routinely look to the elderly, impoverished and children to pay for the Public Debt, perhaps this time around, our cuts should begin with them.