Keep free transit rides for Illinois senior citizens

The first reason to keep free rides for seniors is safety -- the safety, not only of seniors, but of the rest of us.  After you reach the age of 65, your physical agility skills and your vision decline.  The older you get, the greater the decline.  Unfortunately, many seniors don't realize when they've reached that tipping point, when they just don't have the ability to drive safely, anymore.  For the safety of seniors, as well as the rest of us, we need to get seniors out from behind the wheel, before it's too late, not after.  We don't need seniors swerving all over the road because they can't see as well as they used to, and can't control a car as well as they once could.  However, seniors still own that car, and they aren't going to pay twice for transportation (once for their car, a second time to ride transit), so if letting seniors ride transit for free is what it takes to dislodge them from that driver's seat, we need to do that, for the safety of non-seniors as well as seniors.

The second reason is tax fairness.  If you have lived in the Chicago area, all of your life, by the time you reach the age of 65, you've probably paid a million dollars, or more, in taxes.  Residential property taxes, alone, could be seven to ten thousand dollars per year, or more, even for a modest residence.  That's a quick quarter to half million dollars, right there, just in property taxes over 40 years.  After spending all of that money to support government, seniors deserve a reward from the rest of us.  Keep in mind, also, that if a senior lives another 15 or 20 years, the senior may pay another half million to a million dollars in taxes, between property taxes, income and/or capital gains taxes, sales taxes and the big one:  inheritance taxes on the money they leave behind.  That's enough!  Seniors certainly have paid far more than their fair share in taxes to the government.  Free two-dollar transit rides is the least that we can offer them as a "thank you" for the millions of dollars that they have paid in to the government during the past 40 years, and the millions more that they will be paying in before they die.

The third reason is a matter of freedom for our seniors.  We know that many seniors are hard-pressed, financially.  Often, the reason that they are so hard-pressed, financially, is because of all of the taxes that they were forced to pay during the previous half-century.  Many seniors are forced to choose between buying food or buying their medicine.  Paying for transit is out of the question, when they could just sit and rot, for free, in their little apartment or house, all alone with nobody to talk to or be with, during their rapidly dwindling remaining days.  Could we please give our seniors a little freedom to get out and enjoy the world, just a few more times before they die, without charging them two bucks for the privilege?  It's the least we can do for them.

The fourth reason is that free rides for seniors is a great deal, financially, for both non-seniors and seniors.  The money we spend on their free rides is money that will be more than made up when seniors spend money, while they're out, buying goods and services.  When they buy goods, they pay sales taxes.  A purchase of just twenty dollars, whether for lunch or stuff, pays two dollars in sales taxes, at our 10% sales tax rate.  That covers the cost of one of their rides, right there.  A purchase of services means that the recipient will be paying income taxes on those wages.  Free rides for seniors can be a big boost to the economy that more than offsets the cost of their transit.  Besides, most seniors ride mid-day, when there are plenty of empty seats on transit that aren't paying anything to the RTA, anyway.  Not only that, the RTA fiscal analysis for taking free rides away from seniors doesn't take into consideration the millions of dollars that it costs taxpayers to pay for medical treatment and rehabilitation for those who are injured by seniors who crash their cars into other cars because the seniors can no longer drive safely.  Who would you rather see driving around senior citizens?  Feeble seniors, themselves, who can barely see through their cataracts but don't realize that they're half blind, or the fine, professional bus drivers of CTA and PACE, who have commercial driver's licenses (like I have for driving around the Sherman-ator) and who have one of the outstanding driving track records of any group of drivers, anywhere in the world?

So, for all four of those reasons, the state legislature should just say, "No," to the RTA and keep free rides for seniors.

That leaves open, however, the question of how to pay for it.  Where should the money come from to reimburse the RTA for the cost of free rides for seniors?

First of all, for those of you legislators with short memories, the free rides for seniors program has already been fully paid for.  It was paid for by a sales tax increase that was implemented, last year, in the same Bill that established the free rides program for seniors.  In fact, that sales tax increase more than pays for the free ride program, leaving a lot of money, left over, for the RTA, after the cost of senior free rides is covered.

If you are going to take the free rides away from seniors, then you should also, at the same time, take away the sales tax increase that is paying for it.  The RTA will be far worse off, financially, without the combination free senior rides program and sales tax increase that pays for it, than if both the sales tax increase and free rides for seniors remain.

Secondly, remember that $31 billion Capital Bill you legislators passed, this year, in which you granted tens of millions of dollars to houses of worship, parochial schools and religious ministries, some not even located in the State of Illinois?  While the grants have been designated, the money still has not yet been distributed.

The General Assembly should cancel those grants to religious organizations and, instead, use that money to take care of our seniors.  Otherwise, we're left with a situation where free rides from seniors are being taken away from them, in order to come up with the money to give unconstitutional grants to politically connected religious organizations.  That's not fair and that's not right.

It's the responsibility of the General Assembly to look out for the safety and welfare of our seniors, not the financial cravings of churches, which are being abandoned, in record numbers, as more and more people come to realize that God is make-believe.  It's not the job of taxpayers to make up for the loss of revenue to churches, as people come to their senses about religion and realize that there is no god.

Let the religious organizations get the money they want from their few remaining members, not from forced contributions from us taxpayers and at the expense of our seniors.