Be kind for everyone
you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato
The personal tragedies wrought by
tornadoes over the past few weeks in Oklahoma are just the latest
reminders of the difficulties faced by ordinary people in the course
of everyday life in this country. Untimely deaths from disease and
accidents, impoverished and malnourished children, homelessness, drug
and alcohol addiction, urban violence, hate crimes, student massacres
... the list is seemingly endless. That is why I can't understand
the positions taken by today's Republican Party. If you have the
opportunity to do something to relieve or prevent the suffering of
the vulnerable in our society, why on Earth would you choose not to?
Former Republican presidential
candidate and former Senator Bob Dole, answering a question put to
him by Fox News' Chris Wallace, said that neither he nor Ronald
Reagan would feel comfortable with the GOP's present membership.
Dole said that the party should hang a “closed for repairs” sign
on its doors until it comes up with a few positive ideas. A May 28 NYT editorial put it like this: "The
difference between the current crop of Tea Party lawmakers and Mr.
Dole’s generation is not simply one of ideology....Republicans used
to set aside their grandstanding, recognize that a two-party system
requires compromise and make deals to keep the government working on
the people’s behalf. The current generation refuses to do that. Its
members want to dismantle government, using whatever crowbar happens
to be handy."
Dole is a staunch conservative and
holds many of the same general policy positions as the Tea Party
Republicans - although admittedly less extreme. There are few
moderate Republicans around nowadays - at least in the Republican
Party. The closest you have to moderate "Eisenhower Republicans" -
people like former Senators Mark Hatfield of Oregon and Clifford Case
of New Jersey - can now be found within the Democratic Party.
Whether because of Republican obstructionism or because of his belief in his role as Compromiser-In-Chief, Obama has effectively become an
Eisenhower Republican. This is not what we voted for in 2008 or
2012. That said, his policy and budget positions are generally
better than or, at least, no worse than, those of the
Tea-Party-controlled GOP. (For a comparison of the various 2014 budget
proposals, here's a link to a one-page summary from the National Priorities Project.)
There is so much to criticize in the
proposed Republican budget that time and space do not permit even a
partial listing. Their proposed cuts to social services can best be
described as Draconian. And then there is the infamous sequester
brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which in turn was
the compromise response to the phony debt-ceiling crisis initiated by
Republicans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that
750,000 jobs will be lost or not created because of this austerity
measure in this year alone.
"But", in the immortal words
of Arlo Guthrie, "that's not what I come to talk about tonight."
What I really want to talk about is hunger in America and the
current and future proposed cuts to the food stamp program. The
World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when
all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious
food to maintain a healthy and active life”. Food insecurity then
is the opposite: when you don't have enough food to maintain a
healthy and active life.
Take a guess. How many Americans,
citizens of the wealthiest country on Earth, live with "food
insecurity"? Well, in 2011, 50.1 million Americans lived in
food insecure households, 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million
children. [Feeding America website] That corresponds to about 1
American out of every 6.
What was our elected representatives'
response to hunger in America? The Republican-controlled House
Agriculture Committee proposed cuts of $20.5 billion to the food
stamp program over the next 10 years. The Senate Agriculture
Committee proposed cuts of $4.1 billion. This is all part of the
response to the phony deficit crisis - imposing austerity measures in
the midst of a recession. On May 21, the U.S. Senate blocked an
amendment to reinstate the $4.1 billion for food stamps. It was not
just Republican obstructionism this time. For whatever reason, 28
Senate Democrats voted with all the Republicans for the 2013 Farm
Bill which put corporate welfare ahead of low-income families.
The differences in the farm bills will
now be resolved in a joint House-Senate committee. As of December
2012, approximately 48 million people relied on food stamps. That's
more than at any time in history and a direct result of the number of
people thrown into poverty in the Great Recession. The House bill
would drive 2 million low-income people off food stamps. Paul Krugman's excellent op-ed of May 30 analyzes these untimely and
mean-spirited cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
and concludes:
"Look, I understand the
supposed rationale: We’re becoming a nation of takers, and doing
stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care
are just creating a culture of dependency — and that culture of
dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis. But I wonder whether even
Republicans really believe that story — or at least are confident
enough in their diagnosis to justify policies that more or less
literally take food from the mouths of hungry children. As I said,
there are times when cynicism just doesn’t cut it; this is a time
to get really, really angry."
Yup.
RIP Frank Lautenberg
New Jersey lost one of its finest
Senators in history on Monday morning. Frank Lautenberg had a
consistently liberal voting record and he will be missed by the
Senate majority. He had been ill for a while. But so important was
his vote and so total his dedication, he was brought to the floor for
several important Senate votes during his illness - including gun
control. Unfortunately, thanks to the Republican filibuster, these
last public services from the ailing Senator Lautenberg generally
went for naught. You can rest assured that Republican Governor
Christie will appoint a Republican until the special election later
this year. Times will be even tougher for the Senate majority. With
the next chance of changing Senate filibuster rules in 2014 and with
the unlikely return of the House with its gerrymandered
Congressional seats to the Democrats until the next census (2020), it
will be a hard time for progressives.
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