Letter to the senators

I recently sent this letter to our two state senators. Am I over stating the case?


Senators Byrd and Rockefeller,

I wish to first thank your staff for their attention to the emails that your constituents regularly send. It is gratifying to know someone is reading the concerns of West Virginians.

In reading this article today in the Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401179.html, I find that once more concerns over the actions of this administration have preoccupied my mind today.

With the cuts being made to education and to Medicare I fear many of our citizens will be asked, again, to sacrifice when there is little to give away.

Why are we once again offering tax credits to corporations while cutting services to the most needy in America? How much more burden can the American taxpayer be asked to bear while corporate America receives more and more perks? Where is the respect for our blue collar worker and the product he effects when health care, retirement benefits and living wages are denied while the CEO receives bonuses for cutting the workforce?

The middle class is dwindling. Minimum wage is not enough to sustain an individual, much less a family. Costs of heating and gas are placing an unbearable burden on the working class. Our elderly are being forced more and more to choose between health care, food and heat while programs that have assisted them and filled in the gaps are no longer being funded under the Bush administration. The prescription drug plan is, frankly, a joke which provides little or nothing for the most impoverished in our state and the copays for Medicare have once more been raised, forcing seniors to deny themselves health care.

We, the people of America, need help, senators, and we need relief.

It is my fervent hope and desire that 2006 sees a shift in the make up of the senate and house representatives. We have no balance of power in Washington and it is shown in the abuses now taking place.