Pres. Romney would hurt middle class

When President Bush was leaving office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month: we had two wars, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, with no end in sight, and our debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion (2001-2009), and that didn’t even include funds for those wars; Bin Laden was alive and Bush admitted Bin Laden wasn’t that important.

Today, Romney is the Republican nominee for president who has endorsed Paul Ryan’s budget plan.

Ryan’s budget includes millions of dollars of cuts aimed at the poorest Americans and the middle class. Medicare will no longer be in the same form as it is today. You can expect to pay a lot more out-of-pocket expenses, grandma returns to the doughnut hole and pays more for meds, and those with pre-existing conditions or those who get serious life-threatening illnesses can be denied health care coverage.

Ryan’s plan reduces taxes that are paid by the richest Americans and large corporations. It will allow companies to manufacture goods here in this country and then process the money so they do not have to pay taxes. These changes will raise the deficit and make the rich richer.

The plan calls for large increases in military spending. This, too, will increase the deficit.

The trillions in cuts means less money going to the states and to individuals. Pell grants, school lunches, fuel assistance, food stamps, housing assistance and Meals on Wheels will be cut or eliminated.

The sad reality is that we’re still living with the Bush tax cuts and when President Obama tried to repeal them last year, the party of “NO” blackmailed him with no extension of unemployment benefits and everyone would have a tax increase instead of just the 1 percenters. That puts the wealthy and corporations on welfare while the middle class picks up the tab.

Joni Lindgren

Elgin