Many of my friends say that there is no appreciable difference between the two political parties.

With regard to foreign policy, unfortunately, I agree with them. During my adult life, there have been many wars and many intrusions by the United States into other countries where we have no business.

We have overthrown legally elected governments; we have engaged in pointless and brutal wars. Both parties have done this in a “bipartisan” manner.

A big part of the national debt problem that faces us today is a direct result of our unfunded wars. It would help us, both morally and financially, to “bring our war dollars home.” We still haven’t paid for the Vietnam war and we are fast getting sucked into worldwide war. War is the debt.

With regard to domestic policy, however, there is still a big difference between the two parties.

The Republicans seem to be going a little nuts and forcing our country onto a financially suicidal path. They refuse to discuss a fair taxation system that would bring in the money to fund the needs of our country.

They are holding out for tax cuts for the richest people. In order to maintain these tax cuts, they plan to cut into funding for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They want to cut funding for schools, the environment and the safety of our food supply. They seek to destroy the hard-won protections for labor. They even want to gut the child labor laws.

Somehow, they have the idea that these tax cuts for the rich will create jobs for the rest of us, but these tax cuts have been in place for years. The deficit has increased, jobs continue to disappear, schools continue to suffer from underfunding and the infrastructure continues to crumble.

Abby Shahn

Solon

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