Political Candidates often talk way over our heads. In the case of the new gas prices and the hardship it causes the poor they are absolutely out of the loop. The current presidential race is only one among many proving these men and women completely unaware of the plight of the poor. When they speak of high gas prices it has little effect on them.but for the poor it is the difference between food and getting to a doctors appointment!

In the homes of those on fixed incomes they write down a list of the things they can pay and the things they must do without. There are no candidates running now or in the distant past who have ever had to make those hard choices. Congressmen and Senators come to a new year of work with a pay raise on the budget. At the same time they look deep to see which benefit they can cut from the ages and poor. They are privileged to have the best health and life insurance available, as they take a pen in hand to cut the amount the poor and aged can receive when they are sick. Many of the poor sick can not buy the most basic human needs. While the cost of living rises consistently the benefits of the poor are cut consistently. They have no understanding of what it means to be impoverished.

Every politician preparing to run for office should be expected to live for six month on the income of those who are subject to his or her decisions. Before they can cut the income of those in the most need they should have some working knowledge of what that means. They should have to go to work when they have to choose between lunch and gas to get there. Every one of them would be expected to spend mock time in a hospital and get the bill on the same day your welfare or Social Security check is cut in half! They should go to the grocery store in dirty clothes with food stamps and walk by the detergent knowing they can't buy it! They should go through what a single mom does as she tries to raise a child on a check that is one tenth of the cost of living for her a month.

The point is they should be required to live this way long enough for them to have a real understanding of the effect of their decisions. As they walk to the courthouse to sign up for local office. They should be handed the keys to a local single wide trailer and an old clunker gas hog and assigned a minimum wage job. This assignment should include mock sicknesses and mock children with diseases they can't treat. Then when they have completed the assignment and allowed to run for office maybe they could have some conception of the pain normal people have to suffer when they sign their name to budget cuts. Maybe they will think twice before they vote themselves a raise because they will understand the cost. Do you think these people will have a different point of view when they get home to their mansions around the world? Will they feel guilty riding in those limousines, dining in the finest restaurants, or sending their children to the finest schools in the best clothes?

Everyone has the right to have these things and prosper. There's nothing wrong with doing well and having everything you can afford. They have done no wrong being rich! It's just that it is so hard for those who have always done well to understand the hardships of the poor and aged. It would be a great learning experience if they would lay aside their riches long enough to understand the population these cuts harm the most!

Learn more about this author, Shirley Scurlock.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about American politicians do not understand the plight of the poor?
We want to hear your view. Write now!