Complex Owner Concerned About the Future

by David Croyle

Tom Smith at his home office discusses his concern over the national debt.

Six years ago, Tom Smith and his wife built a complex that they offers free to the public. Built as a state of the art gymnasium, elementary basketball, birthday parties, and churches use it.

“It is a facility my wife and I built for the community,” Smith said.

There was overflow parking at last night’s town meeting event that Smith helped to coordinate as president of the Indiana-Armstrong Patriots.

“I am involved because I have seven grandchildren with the eighth grandchild on the way. Those kids are going to be in debt for what we wanted. How can I look my grandchildren in the face using the debt clock, with all the things we have committed to do in this country and the deficit…and explain why everyone of those kids are $370,000 dollars in debt already coming into the world,” he said with concern. “Social Security is not fully funded. They spent it. Is Medicare funded? No.  Our debt is $12 trillion. Congress is asking for another $1.9… When you take the whole picture, everything we have given for ourselves now… future generations will pay for it.”

Smith said he was glad Mr. Obama was elected president. “If John McCain would have been elected, we would have been still going down the slippery slope.  It woke us up.”

Smith denied accusations that Tea Party members across the country were trying to organize their own party.

“We are not trying to become the third party,” he said. “We are just concerned Americans. We hope that one of the two major parties come to their senses and move toward us. There are a lot of people that feel something is wrong and it is time to do something about it peacefully.”

Smith said the Indiana-Armstrong Patriots will be sending Dr. Terry Ray from Indiana as a representative to a national convention for the Tea Party.  

“We as a people have been sleeping too long,” he concluded.