As North Dakota’s Next Senator, I will Protect Social Security & Medicare
We have to flip North Dakota blue
I want to begin this post by telling you a story that is far too common in America.
Imagine a man sitting at a kitchen table.
He’s old, just retired a few years back, and holding a bottle of pills that will keep his heart beating. His Social Security check sits open on one side of the table as he looks over the pocket calendar he’d received as a birthday present from one of his grandchildren.
He counts the days until the next Social Security check.
He counts the pills in the bottle.
The numbers don’t add up, so, with a sigh, he begins the process of rationing his heart medication to get him through the month.
This ritual is a common occurrence in our country today. My grandma went through a similar experience when I was young, and I remember thinking it might make more sense when I got older. But here I am today, running for the U.S. Senate, and it makes even less sense to me, the candidate, than it did to me, the little girl.
We live in America. Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest country in the world? Then how come our elderly can live a life where they give so much to their community, only to see their Social Security and Medicare benefits stripped away when it comes time to collect?
What happened?
When Social Security was introduced in the 1930s it was seen as a symbol for how Americans took care of their own, and perhaps one of the greatest feats of problem solving in American history. It was largely instituted as a reaction to the Great Depression. Everyone was hit hard, but some of us didn’t have the strength of youth to help us pick ourselves back up after we were knocked down.
Social Security was seen as a necessary ingredient for a functioning society, because without it people were living under the constant shadow of fear that they wouldn’t be able to afford the necessities of life once they were unable to work. And, over time, those benefits were expanded to keep up with increasing costs of living.
But now we’re faced with a crisis.
The number of people retiring keeps going up.
The number of people paying their fair share into Social Security keeps going down.
I’m sure you see the problem. We’ve known about this for a long time. The baby boomer generation has reached retirement at the same time younger generations have been having smaller families. Some career politicians in Washington propose gutting, or “sunsetting” Social Security. Not on my watch.
What we need right now are problem solvers, but what we have instead are ineffective politicians.
We need a Senator who will stand up, and fight to protect Medicare and Social Security from any potential cuts. We need to strengthen Social Security, not cut it.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, so it’s a good thing I’m used to solving difficult problems.
Chip in any amount today, let’s flip North Dakota’s senate seat, protect retirement benefits and show the country that we are viable and ready to win.
Thank you for everything, and until next time.
Katrina
I wish you well
Still, how depressing that you need to focus your attention on preserving Medicare and Social Security. (I'm not saying you don't.)
But you incoming senators and representatives ought to be able to focus on taxing net CO2 emissions to halt climate change, raising revenue to reduce the deficit and increase economic growth, creating a merit based immigration system to recruit the world talent, reforming our vast regulatory establishment to make each regulation pass a cost benefit test, reforming taxes to progressively tax consumption, not saving and investment.