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Editor, News-Register:
During his recent State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called for bipartisan support, while emphasizing many of his administration's accomplishments thus far, including the creation of more than 12 million jobs, which is nearly unparalleled in American history; the rate of unemployment reaching a 54-year low of 3.4%; the 2021 passage of the much needed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill; the passage of more than 300 bipartisan bills; as well as other significant achievements.
Although there is much work yet to be done in the area of inflation reduction, significant strides have been made to help alleviate this matter of grave concern. The United States currently has among the lowest rate of inflation in comparison with other countries throughout the world.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, congressional Republicans have objected to the raising the debt limit in order to pay our nation's bills, which could result in a devastating worldwide recession, although they had no objections to the raising of our nation's debt ceiling three times during the Trump administration.
Congressional Republicans have yet to inform the public as to the specifics of such proposed cuts that are phased through critical programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
In addition, although Republicans have voiced objection to President Biden's comments that Republicans could well be considering cuts to Social Security and Medicare during the speech, such are in sharp contrast to Republican U.S. Senatorial Chairman Rick Scott of Florida, who has called for the termination of Social Security every five years unless renewed by Congress. Also, former Republican Speakers of the House Paul Ryan and Newt Gingrich had pledged to turn Medicare into a voucher system while calling for the privatization of Social Security.
Historically, Republicans have called Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a socialist for creating Social Security in 1935.
And the same verbiage has been used to describe President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his creation of Medicare in 1965.
In closing, it also sadly appears that the newly elected Republican majority in the House plans to spend the bulk of its time delving into endless, politically motivated investigations of their political adversaries instead of attempting to actually try to help find possible solutions to our myriad of domestic and international challenges.
Richard Hord
Martins Ferry