Gore gives help to those who need it most
College Democrats
Jeffrey Stuffings
After eight years of unprecedented prosperity in America, it's time to extend help to the people who need help the most. Al Gore will provide opportunity and empowerment for hard-working Americans, whereas George W. Bush will return us to our past practices of comforting the comfortable.
Let's just think for a second what will happen if Bush is elected: School loans and grants will be cut so that we can lower the capital gains tax for the rich. The minimum wage will remain stagnant under the false pretense that it hurts the people it's meant to help. People will be thrown off welfare without anyone helping them get the tools they need to go to work. The earned income tax credit will be slashed, while the top 1 percent of income earners will receive one thousand times more tax relief than the bottom 20 percent.
We will continue not to mind that prison inmates have healthcare coverage while 43 million hard-working Americans do not; 200,000 preschoolers will be shut out of Head Start; 400,000 deserving students will lose their college loans. Millions of seniors will face doubling and tripling Medicare premiums. Handguns will be more common on our streets than police officers. Workers' pensions will be raided. Democracy will continue to be limited only to those who can afford to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to politicians. We will have dirtier air and water, and our wetlands and forests will be auctioned off to the highest bidder in return for short-term profit.
Vice President Al Gore is going to help the Americans who need help the most. He is going to protect Social Security and Medicare so that our seniors do not end up sick and in poverty. He is going to strengthen sub-standard schools instead of shutting them down. He is going to bring us closer to universal health care, provide prescription drugs to our nation's seniors and pass a patients' bill of rights so that HMOs cannot deny coverage in the name of increased profits. The Gore tax plan is going to be more beneficial to middle income earners.
When Al Gore says "middle income," he does not mean someone making over $200,000 a year. Families making between $20,000 and $60,000 a year will receive more tax relief from Vice President Gore than from Governor Bush.
Meanwhile 64 percent of Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut will go to the top 10 percent of income earners. Finally, Gore has pledged to pay down the national debt, so that when a child is born in this country she or he does not already have $20,000 of national debt in his or her name.
In addition, Al Gore is going to make sure that the U.S. military not only protects our economic interests abroad, but our humanitarian interests as well. He will make sure that handguns are kept out of the hands of criminals and that corporate interests will not lay waste to our environment. Gore will pass McCain-Feingold, thus restoring legitimacy to our democracy. There is no chance that Bush would ever do any such thing.
We have a golden opportunity in this country to, in the words of Senator Bill Bradley, "fix the roof while the sun is still shining." We have a chance to make sure that all Americans share in our prosperity. Millions of hard-working Americans have no access to affordable healthcare, college education or housing. If we truly wish to be inclusive, we must extend a helping hand to those who need help the most. If Bush is elected, we will move backward to the days of big budget deficits, big government, stagnant wages for middle income earners and greater disparity between rich and poor. Al Gore has the experience, leadership and commitment to make this nation great. If we truly wish to see any semblance of equality of opportunity in this country, vote for a Gore/Lieberman administration.
Jeffrey Stuffings is the president of the College Democrats Club.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, November 2, 2000
