It's Hard to Participate, I Know All to Well (Post 3 of a Series of Posts)

The following is my third post in a series of posts that shows my letter to those members of Congress who voted for ACA.  If you have not read the first post then I encourage you to do so by clicking here and then reading each successive post until you arrive at this one.

The following portion of the letter is my attempt to help the reader have a better understanding of four individuals whose lives they have affected by their vote:

Lives Touched

To put my challenges in a better perspective, I think you should know in some detail the four lives whom you have touched and how we seek to deal with the problem that you helped create absent any intervention. From a political perspective, my wife and I are not affiliated with any political party (i.e. we are independents). I lean right and she leans left; hopefully, together we are in the center.   We have two elementary school-age children and together we live in a 1,100 square foot home (~ ½ the median) with three bedrooms and one bathroom, which is currently secured with a mortgage.  We have two cars, one 15 years old, the other six years old with the latter secured with a note.  Our children attend public school and an after-school care facility due to us both working fulltime for which we are truly grateful.  We are grateful because during the depth of the recent recession both of us were underemployed. I even took a position that guaranteed me no income whatsoever, but did guarantee expenses. During this period of underemployment, we incurred additional debt; it was not until late last year after five tough and extremely lean years that our financial situation improved such that we could restructure our debt to begin paying it down and to very modestly renew savings for:

1. A raining day,
2. Our eventual & hopeful retirement, and
3. Our children’s higher education.