Jim Wallis says it much more eloquently than I did:
It is a moral disgrace to take food from the mouths of hungry children to increase the luxuries of those feasting at a table overflowing with plenty. This is not what America is about, not what the season of Thanksgiving is about, not what loving our neighbor is about, and not what family values are about. There is no moral path our legislators can take to defend a reckless, mean-spirited budget reconciliation bill that diminishes our compassion, as Jesus said, “for the least of these.” It is morally unconscionable to hide behind arguments for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency. It is dishonest to stake proud claims to deficit reduction when tax cuts for the wealthy that increase the deficit are the next order of business. It is one more example of an absence of morality in our current political leadership.
Hunter over at Kos sums up my feelings on the Republican party’s war on the 60 percent of Americans opposed to the Iraq war perfectly:
No, after a blocking of every avenue of debate, after questioning the patriotism of every critic, this is now the Republican War, through and through. If you’re a Republican, you like this war just fine, and you don’t care how long it takes, how many American troops get killed, or how incompetently the war is run. If you’re a Republican, you think of the war as a vehicle of nationalist virtue, not to be questioned by the likes of fellow Americans who demand answers better than “everything is fine”. If you are a Republican, you meet the calls for an exit strategy with cries of cowardice. You meet calls for investigation into prewar failures with the brazen and shallow admonishment that anyone requiring accountability for failure does not adequately “support the troops”. It is raw nationalism, and raw partisanship, of the ugliest and most cowardly fashion.
Just hours after one small victory, came this enormous defeat.
Last night, House Republicans managed to twist enough arms to force through $50 billion in budget cuts from programs which help the poorest of our citizens. Republicans, like Chris “Count” Chocola, would like us to believe that they are doing it to be “fiscally responsible”:
“Today we are simply slowing the future growth of government,” said Representative Chris Chocola, Republican of Indiana, as the House opened debate. Mr. Chocola said the reductions, if translated to a typical family budget of $50,000, represented a savings of $50.
The reality? These cuts for the poor were necessary so they could ram through an additional $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich. If you’re following along at home, folks, yes, that means that they’re actually ADDING $20 billion to the deficit.
On the backs of the poor.
So the rich can have even MORE money.
Indeed, there IS class warfare going on in our nation. It is the Republicans’ class warfare against the poor and the middle class in our country.
In the last election, “moral values” was trotted out as a key issue for a large percentage of voters. Unfortunately, as we can now see, moral values lost the election in 2004, as it did in 2002 and 2000. The Republican vision - “make the poor people who wouldn’t vote for us anyway even poorer so we can make our rich doners even richer - so they can bribe us again to make them richer still” - is unjust and immoral.
