Whose Money Is It Anyway?

Commentary by Ron Washington, native Chicagoan living in Las Vegas, disabled Marine Corps combat veteran, business owner (Premiers Secours), and proud NU grad. Son of Bernadine C. Washington, former WVON GM, who inspired his love for writing.

 

Nothing is more valued than our hard earned money right? Let’s look at America as a club. Americans are members of a club, we call club members citizens and we just paid our membership dues for the upcoming year. By April 15th we will have sent and the government (the club) will have collected over $5 trillion in dues (taxes) from the hard earned salaries, paychecks and pensions of club members, people like you and me. Club members expect something of value in return for our dues. That’s a lot of money. 

 

The felon in the White House (club president) wants Congress (club board members) to send him back over $1 trillion of our money, that’s 20% of it, on top of the $ billions he’s already spent and wasted to fight his insane war and continue to kill people. 

 

For less than what he’s asking Congress to send him to kill we could spend that money elsewhere where club members could see and feel the benefits of life instead of the consequences of war. After all we are paying our dues aren’t we?

 

We can for instance use our dues money to make childcare free for all club member families, as we spend $600 billion a year on this from our hard earned paychecks. We can make elder care free for all club member seniors who need assisted living as we spend $200 billion on this, if we can afford it. We could increase the salaries of the over 3 million club members who are public school teachers, and school workers and do the same for club members who are public and private workers in all sectors of our economy. We could feed the hungry and house all the homeless club members. We can make health care free for everyone who is in the club. Now this is what we should get as club members when we pay our dues. This makes sense.

 

You don’t need to take a poll to see if club members agree that our dues need to be spent on us, the very people who pay the money in the first place. This is our money not his or theirs. We just need to stand up for ourselves, stop fighting each other, take charge as dues paying members and make sure our money is being spent on things that benefit ourselves, the club members. It starts with the midterms.