Congress, taxpayers should have same plan

I am fine with health care reform, anything at all they care to pass, as long as every public employee, city, county, state, and federal, including the president, is covered by exactly the same plan I am.

We, the taxpayers, pay for their cushy, elite health care plans and pensions. Why should the employees — them — have more and better benefits than their employers — us — the ones who pay for those benefits?

Pensions?  Put them on Social Security, like the rest of us. Let them save and invest, like we do for our retirement. Let them start 401(k)s, which we taxpayers, their employers, will match, like private companies do. Then, when the economy goes bust because of insane government policies (like mandating that banks give loans to people who can’t afford to make their payments), let their 401(k)s suffer, like ours did.

Politicians will never vote for this, so the only way to get it done is to have non-politicians running in the primaries against incumbents in the House and in the Senate, patriotic Americans who want nothing more than to serve their country. Maybe your friends and neighbors? Maybe you and I?

It’s about time Congress and the President are bound by the same laws they pass. It’s about time that our employees, public employees of every kind, are legally forbidden to decide their own benefits. What private employer allows that?  Such benefits should be up to their bosses, the taxpayers … us!

JOANNA FUCHS

Cocolalla