April 4, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Suddenly, prices have jumped 10-20% on most items online. I dread food shopping come Monday. My Social Security online account won’t let me in, refuses my phone six digit, arrived-30-seconds-ago verification code; wait time by telephone is more than four hours. Did the IRS get our mailed tax check; hard to know, and not worth trying to find out. I’d hate to need medical care at the Veterans Hospital now. I dread the sudden occurrence of an H5N1 pandemic now, with vaccine importance unappreciated and vaccine- experienced people gone at the CDC and HHS.
Mr. Trump, the GOP, and Mr. Cline have crippled the systems that serve each of us, especially those of us who are elderly and who count on support from our government that we earned. Like me.
The economists I’ve heard say these GOP tariffs are effectively a tax, and cannot achieve the result Mr. Trump touts. Tariffs will weaken our national and personal economies, especially for citizens of lesser means Tariffs will weaken our nation.
I call on Mr. Cline and Congress to reverse imposed tariffs, lest the letters GOP will come to mean Gouge Our Poor. FRED and PHYLLIS FEVRIER Rockbridge County
