Affirming What I Already Knew

I've known for a long time that all incumbents need to be voted against in the next several elections...at least 2010, 2012 and 2014. Today, Senator Bernie Sanders affirmed what I knew to be true when he wrote an opinion piece on the Politico, essentially saying that the only thing wrong with Social Security is that people aren't taxed enough.

Really? It's not a problem that very soon there will be 2 workers for every one retiree? It's not a problem that people are living longer than ever, but the retirement age isn't moving to adjust? The fact is, people who will be retiring in the next 10 years get full retirement benefits somewhere between the age of 65-67. Figure that the majority of those people are going to make it to 80 and you have people living off the government for 13-15 years. When Social Security was instituted, most people didn't live much beyond 60, and the Social Security retirement age was 62...it was almost a reward for living long enough. I understand the people who pay into Social Security their whole life want something out of it, but come on, where is it written that you should spend 13+ years retired?

This highlights an obvious problem in Washington. We keep sending the same people back year after year, and these people all have their "sacred cows" that they won't even think about changing. For Senator Sanders, it's Social Security, for others it's Medicare and still others, defense spending. If we are ever going to fix what the Department of Defense is calling our greatest threat to National Security (it's the debt, in case you hadn't guessed), everything needs to be on the table...there can't be any "sacred cows!" That's why this year, I won't be casting a vote for any incumbents at the federal level and only 1 at the state level. We need new ideas, not the same old tired ones. Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.