March 2, 2013

Give Them Hell

The 80th Congress was nicknamed the "Do Nothing Congress" by President Harry Truman. The Congress opposed many of the bills passed during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. They also opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal bills. Yet they passed many pro-business bills. During the 1948 election Truman campaigned as much against the "Do Nothing Congress" as against his formal opponent, Thomas Dewey.

Truman won that election.

It is pretty apparent that the *Do Nothing Congress* has returned for the last four years. It is time that President Obama take a page from Harry Truman's play book and campaign beginning now against this do nothing congress so that people are as interested in the 2014 election as they were in 2012.

Obama's case in this campaign is simple, the deficit must be cut. If you do not want necessary government services cut, tax loopholes must be eliminated to help pay for those services. This is the start of a tax reform program, to make our tax system fairer. Worried about Social Security in the future, simple answer is to remove the cap, which will protect the program until the 22th century. It will also make the FICA payroll tax fairer, and maybe enable us to reduce the tax rate. Worried about Medicare and Obamacare, replace it with a single payer Medicare for all system. This would replace Medicare as the high risk pool insurance program, and replace it as a regular insurance program that also covers young healthy people and uses their premiums to help lower cost for all people by removing the middleman for profit insurance companies.

Keep the campaign simple, but make it about important things. A high turnout will produce a congress that the president can work with for the good of all the american people.