DEBATE WRAP UP: Still Many Questions Left

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By Patricia Yarberry Allen

Our editor, Chris, Lombardi, organized our first live-blog chat last night. We really enjoyed our first foray into this immediate way of communicating.  Readers and contributors who are part of www.womensvoicesforchange.org along with millions of Americans, watched this last debate for the Presidential election of 2008.  We all have this sinking feeling that we have a lot to lose. 

We watched, knowing that the DOW had tanked again on the day of the debate, down 700 points from the previous day, in the midst of wild trading based on concerns about the recession and lack of confidence in the current government's plan to provide a plan that makes sense.

It worried me and the women in the group that shared their opinions with me during the debate that neither candidate was realistic about the cost of the current bail outs, and the cost of the programs that we all want for health care, infrastructure restoration, education, assistance to homeowners who are losing their homes and money for stabilizing the ever roiling waters of these turbulent financial market disasters. 

 How can we hope to do any of this if we spend 10 billion dollars a month on the war in Iraq?  And this doesn't cover the cost of caring for our wounded veterans and their families. How can we pay for any of this if taxes are cut?  We can't continue to print money  Our national debt, that is the debt that we, the American people, owe to Sovereign Funds, to the governments of  China, Russian, Japan, and the oil rich countries of the Mid-East will have to paid sometime.  We have learned what happens to businesses and to individuals when we spend spend spend with no thought to tomorrow.

Patricia Yarberry Allen, MD, director of the New York Menopause Center, is a gynecologist affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital and a board-certified fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is a spokesperson on women’s health, and the publisher of Women’s Voices for Change.