There is no issue as urgent nor as important as jobs. We will rue the day we ever helped other countries live as well as we lived. We will now live as they had lived.
Jobs that pay minimum wage or poverty level wage will not correct the situation. Jobs that pay at least middle-class wages are required but without a manufacturing base those jobs can not be created.
I suggest you forget the Presidential election; the Republican Party has not put forth anyone who can defeat Obama. They have not put forth anyone who has a clue as to how to get the United States back on its feet.
The Republicans failed when the opportunity presented itself you did not elect new leadership in the House or in the Senate. You continue to show to the voters as well as the world you are bogged down in the old ways; old thinking and that you have no clue as to how to correct the current condition. Congress as a whole caused our problems and has no solutions.
The Congress must first reject their pensions, healthcare benefits, every privilege you enjoy not available to the voters. Until you do you will never regain the respect of the voters. You will continue to show to the world you take care of yourself first, your contributors second, and if convenient the voter last.
I encourage you to remind your fellow Representatives of the excerpts below of Ben Franklin's speech at the signing of the Constitution:
Mr. President
"I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; … whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? … Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution … and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administred.
On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument."
