Good Heavens! Check out this story about proposed cuts to heating aid for the poor, from which I take the following:Congress, which is locked in a bitter battle over reducing spending, still must decide how much money to give the program for the budget year that began Oct. 1.
In fall 2008, amid concerns about rising fuel prices, the government nearly doubled fuel assistance, releasing $5.1 billion to states for the following winter.
But last February, President Barack Obama proposed cutting the program nearly in half, calling for about $2.5 billion. The House is considering $3.4 billion for fuel assistance, while the Senate reviews a $3.6 billion proposal.
Austerity economics is a cruel task matter. Our decades of listening to the Pied Piper politicians tooting away about cutting our taxes and letting us keep more of our money is coming home to roost. Our country always seems to be able to scrape together and borrow the funds for yet another war or military entanglement, but when it comes to our poorest citizens, the answer seems to be "F" you.
Cutting taxes on the alleged "job creators" (read: rich folks) has unarguably failed totally. The jobs they have created largely have been for other countries, where the wages are immorally low. That strategy is pulling down our wages here at home because we must now compete with these other countries.
Those of us who make up the vast working poor have indeed kept more of our money percentage-wise, due to this flawed economic concept, but so what? Our wages, hours, and benefits have been repeatedly slashed to the point that we are still quickly losing ground.
Now our government is looking at slashing aid to the poor, disabled, and elderly. Prices are high, wages are low, jobs are few, sympathy to assist the needy seems also to be in short supply.
Clearly this was a manufactured crisis, and we didn't go into it blindly so much as we just closed our eyes to reality and went along with the loud fluting. Make no mistake about it: The continual cutting of taxes always eventually leads to the cutting of our nation's safety net. Is that who we are as a people?
Meanwhile, it's going to be a long, hard winter.
6 comments:
What is Afghanistan costing the taxpayer these days? A billion a day? I know that was the figure at one point. That kind of money would have bought a lot of heating oil.
The sad thing is the ones that need and receive these benefits are the exact same ones that will vote against their own best interest. So sad what our country has become. Where is our compassion?
Interesting juxtaposition of post topics: Scrooge yesterday, US government today.
Nice sleight of hand by democrats, defending 'entitlements' loudly, quietly robbing from the weakest and neediest elsewhere. Only problem is, republicans are even worse. Where voting rights are most under attack (sublimated racism) republicans are in control.
It isn't that the glass is half full. It's what it's half full of.
Paul,
It sure would have. And those who now are "budget hawks" didn't squawk at all over that or Iraq.
Sylvia,
And that always astounds me. How brainwashed can someone be so as to vote against their own self-interests?
Exrelayman,
Old Scrooge seems to me to have been a good card-carrying conservative capitalist, right on down to thinking that poor people are all poor because of their own failures and paying lousy wages for tedious work performed under lousy working conditions.
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