I Pin My Hopes on John Kerry
By Leyda Martinez
ENG 1430
As an outsider looking in at a Presidential election for the very first time I find myself intrigued with the many issues a campaign focuses on and the direct effect they have on me and my family. The responsibility that lays in the hands of every citizen of this, the most powerful country in the world amazes me. This election has made me think about all of the issues that will affect me and my family and made me realize how important this responsibility really is. I will not be voting on November 2 because I am not a citizen, but I, like all Americans, am concerned about the future. Will my safety in America forever be based on a color chart? Will I always have a job? Will I and my family always have affordable health care?
My family’s future will be in the hands of either President Bush or Senator Kerry. This may sound a little extreme for some people who believe that President Bush can offer their family a better economy, a secure homeland and affordable health care based on his plan for the next four years. However, I cannot trust him with my family’s safety for another term. He has proven to me that he is not the man for the job. I am not better off than I was four years ago, I do not feel safe, and my perception of this country as a respected and venerated nation has changed radically. John Kerry, who for 20 years has been leading campaigns to solve problems such as acid, rain, rights for Vietnam war veterans who were exposed to agent orange, and expand health care for American children (John Kerry’s Senate record) gives me hope for the well-being of my family. Choosing a President is a hard decision that is mostly base on hope and speculation. We pin our hopes on someone we guess will do the right thing for all of us. If I were going to the polls on November 2, my vote would go to Senator John Kerry.
The safety and security of my two sons is my biggest concern because coming from Colombia, a country where I cannot raise them without fear for their safety, I was very interested in what the two candidates had to say about homeland security. President Bush sponsored the Homeland Security Bill and Senator Kerry voted for it in the Senate. Are we really safe in the United States? The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 proved to me that the answer is no. I know that the Department of Homeland Security is in its infancy and it has a long way to go before it can fully enforce all of its many new laws and policies quickly and effectively. Most people look at our nation’s safety as a national issue, as something that affects this country as a whole. For me it is a personal issue because the attack on the twin towers on 9/11 was practically in my backyard.
Homeland security is about protecting this country’s citizens from any terrorist threat. So every person in this country should be aware of how the government is preventing any further terrorist attacks. They should also feel certain that their government is doing everything in its power to make them feel safe at home. Every port, railroad, airline, utility plant, food supplier, and communication system is not immune to being attacked in some way. I was shocked when I found out that most passenger planes carry commercial cargo that has never been screened. That several months after 9/11 Mr. Carl Prine, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, just walked into chemical plants in Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, and Pittsburgh and was never stopped by security. That ships bring about 7 million containers to America each year and that not all of them are inspected (Lieberman).
These facts are alarming to me and they should be addressed by the government as a top priority. The safety of America’s citizens and its borders should be President Bush’s primary concern and he needs to ensure them of that before safeguarding the Iraqi people half a world away. In all fairness to President Bush and despite the fact that he is labeled as a “cowboy” and that he “rushed America to war” the idea to change the Iraqi regime came from the Clinton administration. Rather than just talking about taking Saddam Hussein out of power, President Bush laid out a plan (Eberle) that going after Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and invading Iraq would stop the spread of terrorism. Weapons inspectors never found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction despite President Bush’s claims to the contrary. No weapons or the devices used to make them were ever found in Iraq. Has the overthrow of Saddam Hussein made United States any safer from further terrorist attacks? The President wants us to believe that this is true, but we really do not know if it is so.
President Bush made bad decisions about foreign policy, and turned his back on many of our allies. The United States no longer has the respect and support that it once had on the world stage. This President has ruined the alliances that every President before him worked so hard to establish. We now live in a country where our security is measured by yellow, orange, and red alerts and we look sideways at our neighbors. Furthermore, because President Bush “has failed to capture or kill America’s No. 1 enemy Osama Bin Laden three years after the terror attacks on New York and Washington” (Michael) the threat of another terrorist attack is probable.
On the contrary, Senator John Kerry has a clearer view of homeland security. His vision is one of concentrating our efforts on inspecting every port in America. Every container that enters into our country is not inspected and every plane’s cargo hold is not X-rayed. This is not acceptable and Senator Kerry pledges to make 100% inspections of every container and of every cargo hold. John Kerry wants to regain our reputation by joining together with the world to build strong alliances with the best intelligence to stamp out terrorism. His goal is a national security where Americans can feel safe at home and abroad. He will go after the real terrorists and bring Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to justice because Iraq is “a war with no end in sight” and “we must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.” (Speech at New York University).
The economy has taken a downturn since President Bush took office. “The American economy has entered “a baffling twilight zone” writes Robert G. Samuelson (The American Prospect). The unemployment rate now stands at 6 percent and 8.8 million Americans are without jobs, an increase of 3 million since October 2000 (Meyerson). Jobs have been and are still going overseas at an alarming rate. They are being outsourced to companies outside of the United States because it is more cost effective. Many companies refuse to hire new employees because it costs too much to provide health care benefits. So outsourcing becomes a more attractive proposition. I wonder if another four years of the Bush administration will cost me my job to outsourcing? Never before in the history of the United States have so many jobs been lost under one President. John Kerry has stated that President Bush and his administration are not entirely to blame for the loss of jobs to outsourcing. He recognizes that companies will go where they can to save the most money. He does however blame the President for rewarding these same companies with benefits for taking jobs overseas. He has allowed them to defer their taxes and that is not fair. This is a major loophole that he intends to close. He intends to use that money to lower corporate tax rates 5 percent and create a manufacturing jobs credit that will encourage companies to keep their jobs here and hire more Americans.
Another issue that I thought about during this campaign was health care for my family. There were times over the last four years where I had to decide whether or not I could afford health insurance for my family. My employer kept switching insurance carriers to cut down on expenses. Many times it did not benefit me and to keep my coverage I was forced to cut back on other necessities just to afford coverage for me and my family. It has gotten more expensive as the price taken out of my pay each week has increased as well as the price of my co-pay. Under the Bush administration “five million Americans have lost their health insurance” (3rd Presidential Debate) and many children in our country do not have health care. This is a very sad statement for the richest country in the world. Over the past four years we have had insurance companies rationing out our medication, less access and fewer choices to doctors and long waits for approval of referrals and medications. President Bush allowed insurance companies to overrule our own doctor’s decisions while costs have increased. Health care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent while prescription drugs are up 12 percent. On the other hand, Kerry’s plan lowers costs and allows you to choose your own doctor, and you, not the government, make medical decisions about your coverage (Kerry Returns Bush Volley on Health Care). He plans to use 600 million to 1.5 trillion dollars of federal money to give health care coverage to about 27 million uninsured Americans. He will give Americans broader access to private health care plans, therefore, giving them
more choices. John Kerry’s cost for his health care plan will be spread out over the next ten years and it hinges on many other factors. Education spending, new tax cuts for the middle class, closing corporate loopholes, and rollbacks on tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. If this country can once again restore the economic boom enjoyed in the 1990’s, it would make John Kerry’s health plan and his proposal to return to the pay-as-you-go program all that more attainable.
If I were standing in a voting booth on November 2, the issues I have stated above would be my major concerns. I would be thinking about how the man I was going to vote for would put my fears to rest. My hope would be that four years from now I will feel safe once again in this country, I would have confidence in my job’s security, and have affordable health care for me and my family. I believe that John Kerry’s clear thinking and sound judgment will once again restore our alliances and bring us back the respect from the rest of the world thereby restoring us our security at home. His plan for rebuilding our economy and closing the gap in our loss of jobs to outsourcing makes perfect sense and will strengthen and rebuild our wounded economy. His health plan will benefit America and his experience in the Senate gives him the know how to make it work.