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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

The Republican Budget

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS LETTER IS SCHEDULED TO APPEAR IN THE BERGEN RECORD


("The House Budget Disaster")


It is not so much a budget as it is a declaration. A continuing resolution on the part of the Republican party to wage war, both abroad and at home.


This is a political animal who looks for myriad ways to fund our department of defense, to be ready for the next battle. Despite the fact that we are a nation weary of bringing back our dead and our physically and psychologically wounded from conflicts that have gained us little but ever growing enmity, the Republican psyche requires that we carry a big stick and a big price tag for all our toys.

In our own country, there is the perpetual cry by the right (and how ironic that such a word should have any attachment to this group) to undercut the underclass, to find ways to diminish their existence and to make them feel they do not warrant a fair and decent life. Their health care rights attacked, their unemployment benefits slashed, their access to entitlements (and how ironic that such a word is deemed by the Republican party to be infected with such a negative connotation) forever threatened or removed, their very being treated like a stain upon this nation.

The Republican position on the proposed budget is not a matter of semantics or numbers, but a statement of contempt for those who do not fit under their definition of acceptable. It is a call to prepare to terminate enemies both foreign and domestic, not to protect the welfare of our nation but to line the pockets of the wealthy at the very heavy expense of the poor and the weak.

It is a budget that once more establishes the ugliness and moral shortcomings of the party that somehow has turned its own brand of fear and hate mongering into a position of power and control in the Congress of the United States.

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