What if things were different three years ago? What would our country be today? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Just after Trump took office, a friend who happens to be a college professor and liberal, asked me what I thought of Trump and why. I told him that when I started college at Syracuse University I had a new group of friends. As I was from upstate New York and grew up in a farming region, I was shocked to meet and live with young men from the New York City area. They were rude and crude next to the way I was raised and expected to behave. I had forgotten about this first encounter until Trump started to campaign. I was meeting my college friends all over again. So I told my friend this and explained that most of Trump’s language was the same as I had experienced as a freshman in college—in your face, rude and crude. I added that as I got to know my new friends I found them to also be sincere and trusting and became close to many of them. So, what if Trump had come from upstate and had been a politician who owed his rise to the top to other politicians and lobbyists as most of those running for the highest office are? Would he have been more acceptable to his political foes and many in his own party? You will have to answer this as you read because it is hard to imagine.
Becoming president without any political baggage and funding your own campaign left the rest of the politicians out in the cold because they had no leverage over him. It was a new day, and he had become the leader of the USA with no debt to anyone except the American citizen. His ideas clashed with the political “ins” who had held power for many years, and they started a revolt immediately. So, what if the Republican never-Trumpers and Democrats had decided to work with the new president instead? Where would the immigration problem be today? The wall would be nearly completed, the large push of illegal immigration would have been stemmed and never happened, and the laws of immigrating to the US would have been changed to make it a better system. We would have seen an increase in the number of work permits granted to foreigners, and legal immigration would have taken center stage. The drug problem would have been reduced and maybe the huge number of opioid deaths would have been reduced substantially. The need for sanctuary cities would have been illuminated, and criminals would have been prosecuted before committing more crimes as we see now.
What if Congress had worked with the president on infrastructure? Perhaps we would be seeing bridges being replaced or repaired and the interstate system being upgraded. Additional roads and needed repairs to old ones would be on the way to completion by now. The construction industry would be screaming for new employees and using many of those who obtained the new work permits. Some of the inner cities would be razed and rebuilt, and what if the mayors of those cities worked with Ben Carson and the administration to help the homeless and poor living on the streets. It is a shame that none of this has happened. We see the homeless problem growing in California during one of the most robust economic times in our country.
What if the cities that have the high crime rates had worked with the administration instead of declaring themselves as sanctuaries for illegals and criminals, and refusing to follow federal law? What if fighting the drug addiction problem included following federal law with regard to marijuana? We might need fewer rehab centers, which now we are very short on. The people who raged against the tobacco user and prohibited smoking in almost all public spaces are the same ones that are now advocating marijuana use and making it available to the public even though it is worse for the brain and lungs than tobacco.
What if Congress had passed the Mexico-Canada rrade bill a year ago instead of holding it up. It would have been possible that the Chinese would be working with us on Phase 3 or Phase 4. Passing the bill puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the world to enter into trade agreements with us. This might have included prescription drugs and lowering their cost. What if Congress had worked with the administration on the cost of medical delivery. Instead of the standstill on the subject due to both sides with their lines in the sand and trying to make Obamacare work or go to a single payer system, we could have seen what buying insurance across state lines would do for forcing insurance companies to standardize their forms used by doctors and hospitals to request payment. A friend of mine said that the hospital that he had been the CEO at had 400 clerks just filling out the various insurance forms asking for payment. Each company had a different form, and Medicare and Medicaid each had different forms that required teaching many clerks to use them. Restricting medical entities to stop using insurance and Medicare dollars for advertisement would also reduce costs. Our local and Pittsburgh medical systems spend millions on advertising, and that money is being charged to patients with no medical benefit returned.
What if Congress and the administration worked on the college loan problem and restricted the amounts a student could borrow depending upon his major and expected income with that major. What if states started to give tuition-free medical and dental education to those who would practice in rural areas or become family practice physicians. What if tuition to medical and dental schools were not subsidized by insured government loans, and the loan amount was reduced to a fixed amount rather than climb with the whims of the institutions providing the training.
We could keep going on about all of the “what ifs,” but I think by now you get the point that working together gets things done that most of us expect when we vote for a political candidate. When those elected decide to ignore the position they have been given to gain or keep political power such as we have seen during the last three years, it is the citizen who is hurt by the politicians’ dereliction of duty. The homeless continue to live on the street, the alien is denied future entry and a chance for the American dream, the murder rate keeps going higher in the inner cities, medical costs go higher, the drug problem stays with us and a solution seems impossible, and our tax dollars are completely wasted on political power struggles. We cannot even believe the evening news anymore because the slant and bias has become more important than the facts. God HELP US!
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