Congress must pause to think

The Obama administration and Congress are self-serving and make irresponsible and irrational decisions. The welfare of the United States has been disregarded.

With an already serious Bush spending-without-taxes-to-pay-for-it deficit, the Democrats have continued to bankrupt this country with proposals of an extremely expensive health care plan. We are already trillions of dollars in debt, and in a recession, so why would any common sense person add more trillions to the national debt unless it is for political advantage and damn the consequences.

The government is very bad at estimating future costs of new programs. The public always gets the low estimates to make them sound more acceptable. In 1990 the Medicare estimate was $12 billion, the actual cost was $111 billion. In 1987 the Medicaid hospital payment estimate was $1 billion, the cost was $17 billion. Maine had a similar experience with the "non-categoricals" (low income adults) costs when added to Maine Medicaid.

Even worse, Congress has added to the bill that members of Congress are excused from having the same insurance the rest of us will have. Ask Representative Michaud how he voted on that one. Has he read the 1,000 pages?

We are going to have increasing problems in borrowing more money from the Chinese and Arabs. Our dollar is gradually becoming worthless. My suggestion is that Congress do nothing without further careful consideration. The non-political common sense answer is out there.

Thomas F. Shields, Auburn