Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Tornadoes, Hunger, and Getting Angry


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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