Family

Family is a good thing. We don't always think so, but it's true. All families have issues. Nobody's perfect. Our new President seems to be big on families. A large portion of his budget proposal, as well as his stimulus package is directed towards "middle-class" families. In fact, President Obama is so big on families that he put Vice-President Biden in charge of the White House Task Force on Middle-Class Working Families.

I've been wondering what the Vice-President's been up to and now I know. His task force has a website. http://www.whitehouse.gov/StrongMiddleClass/

Now the stimulus package that was passed in February supposedly contained money to subsidize COBRA insurance payments, cover the Child Tax Credit, give $2 billion to the Child Care and Development Block Grant, $1 billion to Head Start, and $1.1 billion to Early Head Start, $20 billion for Food Stamps, funding for food banks and WIC. In addition, the stimulus package included $5 billion to help low income families make their homes more energy efficient, and $3.95 billion for the Workforce Investment system,to support green job training, summer jobs for young people, and other opportunities, $25 per week for Unemployment recipients and incentives for states to expand unemployment eligibility, as well as an extra $250 payment to Social Security and SSI beneficiaries and new resources for the TANF program.

I tell you these things so you'll know what families are already supposed to be getting. The Vice-President and his task force have asked that you send them your ideas on the following subjects:

1) How can we make retirement secure?
2) How can we make child and elder care affordable?
3) How do we improve workplace safety?
4)How are we going to pay for college?
5) What can we do to help parents juggle work and family?
6) What jobs of the future can we begin to create?


No offense, but in my opinion, I think both the stimulus package and the task force failed to address the very first question they should have asked which is: How do we keep more families together?

Perhaps we might consider raising the legal age to marry to 21.

Perhaps Wal-Mart, or Target, or K-Mart, or somebody will give away board games and popcorn on "family night." After all, if Milton-Bradley really wants to promote "family-night" then they might want to consider mass give-aways of one board game to entice cash strapped families to invest in other board games.

Families that have family-night might want to invite friends or neighbors. Who knows, block parties could make a comeback.

I think I'll send some of my ideas to Mr. Biden. I hope you do the same. If we all work together, maybe we can solve all the problems. You might have the best idea. It would be a shame for you not to share it.

Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato

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