"I'll vote for Obama"

"I used to be a Republican, but I voted for Obama

in the last (2008) election because I like Obama's approach," said Karen Dunne, a retired U.S. school teacher, "I think Republicans should take the blame for a lot of what's wrong now, because they don't like banking regulations.

"They (the Republicans) are obstinate and they don't even try to come to the table," Karen, and her husband Jimmy Dunne, told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview. Karen and Jimmy, 78, said that they will vote for President Barack Obama in the coming general elections in November this year as they believed that the U.S economy will continue to improve under Obama. Both Jimmy and Karen, who taught in a Methodist pre-school before retiring four years ago, discussed how Obama's years in office, together with a slow economic recovery from recession, have been felt in their lives. "The last four years have impacted me and my family. I see the value of my (investment stock) assets went down from the period of 2008 to 2011, but they've been coming back up since then," said Jimmy. "We've noticed the price of gas went up since Obama took office, but that's coming down now." Like many Democrats, Karen and her husband see Republicans -- and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's race partner Paul Ryan's plan to end Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and reduce Medicare benefits -- as a threat to the government-sponsored health care on which they rely. Despite the fact that their own Medicare coverage would be exempt from Republican-proposed cuts affecting people age 55 and below, they see a pattern of what they say are that party's political injustices to seniors. "Republicans will take away your health care," said Jimmy. " Under a Romney administration, both healthcare and Social Security programs would be cut back."How the next four years play out depend entirely on which administration is chosen by voters to be at its helm, said Jimmy, also West Houston Democratic Club president and a retired math teacher. He said that the U.S. economy is experiencing slow but steady growth in the housing market and auto industry and he expects those areas to continue to improve under Obama. "If Obama is re-elected, he will continue to tweek the healthcare program and continue to pull the military out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I expect that if Romney is elected, we'll see tax cuts for only the top 2 percent. Romney would get rid of the affordable healthcare bill he calls Obamacare. Under Vice President Ryan, the economic system would be more unfair than what we have now." "One of the biggest ways Republicans want to impact the government is by defunding Social Security and Medicare, programs they call socialism or entitlements, but then they won't deal with the issues," Karen said. "Under President Romeny, they would dismantle Obamacare, put it under control of private interests that would create individual policies that a lot of people can't afford," Jimmy said. "Romney would increase spending on military and defense when we don't need to have these bases all over the world with troops in Germany and South Korea." "My son is still out of work," said Karen. "He's been out of work for a few years now because he worked for a housing developer when the housing industry went bottoms up. I blame that on the Bush administration." "I want to see more fairness in taxation. Republicans lean toward taxation of the middle class, but they should let the Bush tax cuts expire. Obama wants to end them just for people making under a certain amount," Jimmy said. "The wealthy have a big advantage, having a capital gains tax rate of only 15 percent." He said that he's not totally satisfied with Obama's leadership during the last four years, particularly as it concerns " unnecessary" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in failure to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he said that his fears for the nation's possible future under Romney far outweigh any concerns about Obama. Karen, a 1964 graduate of Texas Christian University, is also worried that a Republican government in control of the White House would undercut the already underfunded U.S. Food and Drug Administration's food protection services. She cited the "huge amounts of money" corporations can now funnel to their favored political candidate since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Commission decision allowing for unlimited spending on advertising not connected to, or coordinated with, political campaigns. The couple believed the top priority for the next four years will be job creation and economic growth to get the United States moving again.