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Why are motorists being penalized with an additional gasoline tax; especially at a time when oil prices are on the rise, and no one really knows when or where the increase will top out? Yes, the United States does enjoy some of the cheapest energy prices in the world, but if prices must rise let it be done systematically, to give people time to adjust — rather than as a last-ditch effort for political compromise.
The Medicare premium and deductible increases are much the same story. They will affect the poorest Americans, those least likely to be able to absorb another increase in health costs. Wealthy people don’t depend on Medicare and Medicaid, but those less fortunate often scrape to meet the costs as it is. To ask those people to pay yet more seems unfair. >
The Congress and the President have compromised to reach an agreement to save the Federal government from two less palatable alternatives: the across-the-board sequestration mandated by the Gramm-Rudman law, and the spectre of more than a million Federal workers on furlough because the government ran out of money. The latter possibility was avoided when the Congress approved yet another continuing resolution to keep the government running until the budget is approved.
But in its rush to put the budget responsibility behind it, we hope the Congress will take a hard look at the compromise agreement. We think that America’s political leadership could do better.
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