President Biden’s anti-energy, pro-tax and spend policies, supported by congressional Democrats, are destroying seniors’ lifetime savings, pensions, 401k, SEP, equity, and cash holdings. Seniors struggled with more mandates and bureaucracy, less accountability. They pay high taxes, higher prices for rent and medicine, work longer, retire later, socialize less. Their views – love of country, character, faith, and history are disparaged. This is Biden’s legacy, a war on seniors.
Take these attacks in order:
First, Inflation continues to rise, driven by an insensible Democrat obsession with mandating a world without fossil fuels, foreseeably plentiful, buffable, powering most of our electric grid, cars, trucks, trains, planes, and homes.
Democrats autocratically killed US energy independence, meaning we must buy oil and gas from foreign producers, themselves polluters. Loss of energy means higher prices, demand chasing too little supply.
In other words, Democrat wishful thinking – supposing wind, sun, and power consolidation will deliver what fossil fuels already do – is a bad joke. Ironically, the Chinese laugh while Americans pay. China produces 2.5 times our emissions, gas-powered cars in demand, coal burned with abandon.
Main point: Inflation, steady loss of a saved dollar’s value, is hitting all Americans but seniors on fixed incomes, who worked and saved, hardest. Biden’s policies – are literally robbing America’s seniors.
Second, seniors not only face higher inflation on a fixed income, but their “basket of goods,” the exact things on which they spend money is hit harder.
While inflation notched up last month to near nine percent, the cost of rent rose 26 percent year-over-year, while energy – e.g., the price of oil for seniors living in homes in New England – is up 33 percent. Used cars are up 43 percent. So-called “Affordable Care Act” premiums are expected to hit double-digits in 2023.
Third, bureaucracy kills seniors. While some manage digital innovation well, others do not. New government mandates, complexity, indifference, restrictions, and bureaucracy make elder access harder, anonymity easier, accountability lower. Seniors and technology do not mix and this is causing major setbacks for them.
As size of government (or any organization) grows, responsiveness typically falls. Add a dizzying array of new regulations, digital gates, program complication, and administration – and older Americans feel increasingly marginalized, disenfranchised, plagued by questions like what “their pronouns” are.
Fourth, older Americans tend to love the American flag – saw it planted on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. They love the anthem – sing it at ballgames. They love our history – learned it in elementary school. They revere – many defended – the Bill of Rights. They advocate for equality of opportunity, on which many earned a living – less for giveaways.
They tend to be people of faith, believe girls and boys are different, think equality between the two sexes is right so support Title IX. They think learning math, biology, chemistry, physics, writing, reading, and history is what schools are for, not teaching leftist political activism or indoctrination in Marxism.
Fifth, while many still work – well into their upper years – they also have an ambition to retire, which Mr. Biden and the Democrats are objectively taking away from them, as they work longer, retire later, and pay higher direct and indirect taxes.
Finally, most older Americans – of whatever political leaning – tend to love this nation, they appreciate citizenship, expect the borders to be protected, north, south, east, and west. They have been law abiding citizens all their lives, think rule of law matters, police matters, riots and political violence are unacceptable, and laws should be enforced not ignored.
Unfortunately, and rather shockingly, the Biden Administration and Hill Democrats differ with most older Americans on virtually all these points. They are content to push them into higher tax brackets and erode the life savings of those on fixed incomes with intentional inflation, raise their private debt with higher interest rates, and do not care that seniors pay more for energy, rent, and medicine.
Pro-government-growth Democrats watch accountability fall, as seniors struggle to make sense of new tax laws, regulations, and unnecessary red tape, penetrate an ever-larger federal government, get lost and left on “hold” somewhere in the labyrinth of new restrictions, requirements, mandates, and hoops.
Moreover, they seem indifferent to the role seniors have played in making this nation what it is, serving in war and peace, combat and commerce, building and sustaining America’s institutions, innovation, technology, and the many options and offerings younger age cohorts use unthinkingly.
For their efforts, the Biden team – led by a guy who earned all his wealth off US taxpayers – rewards them by denigrating their values, cancelling their speech, closing their churches, letting people attack places of worship, suspending bail, defunding public safety, trying to take their guns, redefine their words, remake and take their children and grandchildren, tear down statues honored for decades, and rewrite Americans history, as well as deconstruct American culture.
So, net-net, what do seniors see, what is the world Mr. Biden’s transformational thinkers are delivering? It is a world closer to chaos than contentment, no respect for hard work, savings, and old-fashioned patriotism, service, remembering, honoring the past.
Biden’s team seems less about character than character assassination, less about truth and stability – economic, legal, historical, and political – than the reverse, churn. That does not sit well with seniors. They have been around, know what they know. The sum looks more and more like war – on seniors.