General Assembly should address our real needs

To the Editor:

We’re all tired. It’s been a long year. We need our leaders to cut the crap and work on addressing the challenges Hoosiers face every day — a better economy, improved health care, education for our kids.

The General Assembly should focus on these issues, but the GOP supermajority has a different agenda — they would rather fight culture wars and help their wealthy friends. The Republicans that we sent to represent us aren’t solving our problems; they’re creating new ones for us.

Here’s what the Indiana GOP has decided to prioritize over the issues Hoosiers care about:

• Taking money from our schools to fund vouchers;

• Lowering lead standards and relaxing lead reporting requirements in schools;

• Redrawing school district lines so that schools are more segregated;

• Taking away any recourse you’d have if your employer doesn’t take necessary safety precautions;

• Punishing people who make honest mistakes on unemployment forms;

• Keeping teacher pay among the lowest in the Midwest;

• Fighting a turf war over Indianapolis and rescinding ordinances that Indy residents support;

• Making it illegal for cities to change names, despite no city wanting to;

• Allowing developers to destroy wetlands;

• Stripping funding for food banks when more Hoosiers need them than ever;

• Preventing even having a debate about the state minimum wage;

• Blocking sales tax breaks to help small businesses during the pandemic;

• Blocking workshare programs which keep people working;

• Changing rules to make it harder for people to post bail;

• Allowing cops to take your property even if you have not been convicted of a crime.

This is what the Indiana GOP has deemed essential during a global health and economic crisis.

The leaders we sent to Indianapolis aren’t interested in making your life better; they want to fight culture wars.

They’re not helping workers and folks struggling to get by; they want to ensure wealthy business owners’ profits are growing.

They aren’t taking steps to help students; they want to give their own businesses unfair advantages.

We’re all tired of this pandemic; we’re tired of politics and we’re tired of the everyday challenges that are becoming the new normal. Increasingly, we’re tired of the politicians in the Statehouse. We’re tired of being failed by those who run our state.

Senator Bray, Senator Crane and Representative Baird — how much longer will you test our patience?

Sincerely,

Kevin Verhoff

Greencastle