As a personal beneficiary of the service that Amtrak provides and as someone who represents a congressional district that counts on safe, reliable rail service, I am a strong supporter of providing this vital industry the funding necessary to continue operations.
However, this President sees no problem eliminating funding for Perkins Loans in his budget, even though the cost of tuition is rising and will continue to rise as the administration's policies force inflation.
In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.
In my district, the budget scales back and eliminates several long-term shore protection projects important to the safety and economic security of Long Island.
In this time of budget cuts, we cannot forget that basic science is a building block for scientific innovation and economic growth in the information age.
It seems to me morally a decent society will try to take some of the increased benefit and use that to alleviate the pain of the few who are bearing the cost that made it possible.
While the wealthiest families completely benefit from the tax cuts targeted towards the upper brackets, middle-income families were hit with the unwelcome surprise of higher taxes on tax day.
Our nation and those of the developed world must offer our own resistance to despot leaders who seek to commit murder on the basis of religion or race.
