E.J. Dionne: House mollycoddles the rich

[billr]

By E.J. Dionne
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, November 4, 2005
WASHINGTON - The politicians who favor cutting taxes on the
wealthy typically proclaim their desire to encourage hard
work, personal responsibility and family values. So why are
House Republican leaders pushing a budget that, when it comes
to our neediest fellow citizens, is a direct assault on ...
hard work, personal responsibility and family values?

Here are some things those leaders don't want you to know. 

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/13812007p-14653061c.html

[billr]

1. link

[Paranoid Pessimist]

2. My email reply to E.J.

You're surprised?

Of course they're going to try to cut things like foster care. That's the stuff they hate. Government services to the poor are what Grover Norquist is talking about when he says he wants to shrink government down to a size to where he can drown it in the bathtub. He doesn't mean defense spending or pork. To them, all not-for-profit government services are Communism, plain and simple. If they could they'd eliminate libraries (people ought to be buying books), free police and fire, anything that remotely smacks of Socialized Medicine or Welfare. To them, everything should be bought and paid for.

They may try to frame it as "facing up to the deficit" but they created the deficit deliberately in order to be able to eliminate these programs.

[rodeodance]

3. "you can't finance a war with tax cuts."

......I'm sorry to wax so angry, but I'm aghast that some serious people are giving congressional conservatives credit for "finally facing up to the deficit."

If House leaders were serious about the deficit, they would admit that you can't finance a war with tax cuts.

If the administration believes so deeply in our endeavor in Iraq, it should have the courage to ask Americans to pay for it through a temporary war tax. If we need a big increase in military and homeland security spending to fight terrorism, why not acknowledge that the tax cuts the administration has pushed into law no longer make sense?

If we want to help hurricane victims, why ask poor Americans to take on most of the task of financing our collective generosity?
........

[rodeodance]

4. most of the people I know feel helpless and angry about this--no one

listens. they call their congress people and nothing happens. People are frustrated. The Senate already cut cut cut.


I am feeling helpless about this also.

[cspanlovr]

5. Look at all the little piggies, leading piggy lives...

this winter we'll have another Katrina, but with snow. The old, the poor, the disabled will die of hypothermia in their beds. They will promptly be blamed for their lack of "personal responsibility." I can almost hear it..."are there no prisons? are there no workhouses?"