Now that U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has returned to Congress, we should all agree on the obvious: Any younger person who wants power will have to claw for it or simply wait for the current politicians to pass away from old age.
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Feinstein got attention a few years ago for belittling young climate change activists, telling them that she’s been doing politics a lot longer than they have and that she knows what she’s doing. Except, little to nothing has happened on climate policy for the decades she’s been in office and likely won’t before she is no longer with us. Therefore, young people are simply resigned to the fact that we will just have to wait for her and other elderly politicians to pass away for any meaningful change to happen in this country.
Notable exceptions are U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey, among a handful of others, who have done everything in their power to leave the world just slightly better for younger people, and younger people have greatly rewarded them politically.
After decades of inaction on issues such as the widespread degradation of the planet on which we rely to survive, older members of Congress such as Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi are wholly unwilling to pass the torch of power to anyone whose lives will be affected by the festering existing problems. So much the worse for the rest of us.
— Ethan Feingold, Chicago
Vice presidential pick matters
Like so many other elder voters, I am concerned that we have not one but two elder hopefuls running for president in 2024. This escalates the importance and seriousness of the vice presidential choice. I feel that all candidates, regardless of age, should make known their vice presidential choice as soon as they throw their hat in the ring.
We as voters should be given time and ability to thoroughly educate ourselves with each possible president-vice president ticket before the primaries.
“A breath away” has taken on a new, very serious meaning for the 2024 election!
— Barbara Paget, Highland Park
GOP’s position on debt limit
Many Tribune readers sounded off that the GOP should not negotiate over the nation’s debt limit. One letter writer basically says if you buy a car on credit, you must make payments (“GOP’s bad-faith negotiating,” May 15). Yet if you bought a car you couldn’t afford, wouldn’t you try to lower other expenses you have to make the payments?
Some letter writers say the GOP objects to raising the limits only when a Democrat is in office, but what about when Joe Biden as a U.S. senator objected to lifting the limit? Some people blame the GOP tax cuts, yet they did not notice that since the cuts, revenue has increased. What has increased faster is spending.
Finally, the letter writer who compares the situation to car payments thinks it’s unfair for the GOP to take an extreme position and expect Democrats to have to meet in the middle. What? This is called negotiating. And what is the GOP’s extreme position? Claw back unspent COVID-19 funds and go back to 2022 spending levels.
It’s President Biden and Democrats who are taking the extreme position.
— Ken Nelson, Chicago
Republicans’ hypocrisy
I guess it would have been OK with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump if Democrats had held up the debt limit extension when Trump was president until the 2017 tax cuts, which mostly benefited wealthy citizens and corporations, had been rescinded.
After all, that step would have cut $1 trillion a year from the deficit. Isn’t deficit-cutting the Republican goal? Instead, McCarthy and the rest want to eliminate funding to help deal with climate change largely due to automobile emissions. I guess they don’t care about that future.
— Kevin Coughlin, Evanston
Living paycheck to paycheck
With the U.S. government stating that it may run out of money by June 1 without an increase in the debt limit, we’ve discovered that the largest economy on earth lives paycheck to paycheck. It would therefore seem logical that a negotiated reduction in future spending is more than appropriate.
— Mike Parilla, Park Ridge
Trump and Putin’s similarities
I didn’t watch the CNN town hall with Donald Trump. But later, when I watched the high points of the event, I had to do a double take. Is this Trump or Vladimir Putin? Their town hall events are almost indistinguishable. They highly vet the attendees, permitting only the most hardened supporters, to guarantee applause for every absurdity. The modus operandi is the same: Deny, deflect and delay. They consider themselves infallible, genetically incapable of saying or doing the wrong thing.
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Trump and Putin have had a great relationship that started years before Trump’s first term. Perhaps they should run together on the same presidential ticket. I shutter to think how Trump would end the Russian-Ukrainian war. I would expect nothing short of an existential threat to the NATO alliance.
— Robert Priban, Crest Hill
What about Donald Trump?
I wonder why people who want to ban certain books because of their content don’t insist on banning remarks and actions of our former president, Donald Trump. His views and actions are often very objectionable and set a bad example for our youth and all of us. Why should that be all right?
At least if you don’t like a book, you can put it down.
— The Rev. Clara Thompson, Montgomery, Illinois
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