Republicans Use Budget Cuts as Retribution for Re-electing Barack Obama

For Americans who make it their business to follow politics, it is a recurring theme that every time a Democrat is elected president, fiction writer Ayn Rand’s novels become all the rage in conservative circles. When teabaggers took control of the House in 2011, Rand devotee Paul Ryan made waves when he decried the “takers” draining assets from the beleaguered richest one percent he referred to as “makers,” and although Ryan’s characterization of the poor is despicable, he is correct that Americans are being raped by “takers.” However, the takers are not Americans ravaged by the Bush-Republicans economic malfeasance that destroyed millions of jobs and increased the number of Americans living in poverty, but Republicans in Congress and state legislatures who have spent the past two-and-a-half years taking any and everything from the American people they can lay their dirty hands on. In fact, it is an exercise in futility to cite anything Republicans have not attempted to take from Americans and with the debt and deficit falling at a record pace, it appears their cuts are anything other than retribution for electing an African American President.

Last year it was revealed that America ranked second to Romania as the nation with the highest rate of children living in poverty (23.1%) and hunger, and this week House Republicans celebrated their proposal to cut $21 billion from SNAP (food stamps) that will take food stamps away from 2 million people, as well as ensuring that 210,000 hungry kids are no longer able to get free school lunches. It is the ultimate expression of evil to take food out of the mouths of any hungry human being, but it takes a special kind of monster to deliberately withhold food from hungry children. Conservatives prevented a farm bill from passing last year because they opposed the Senate’s bill as not harsh enough and forced them to start anew in this session of Congress.

The Senate is working on its second farm bill in less than a year that cuts $4 billion from the SNAP over ten years to garner support from selfish Republicans. Democrats attempted to eliminate cuts to food stamps, but Republicans refused to vote for any measure that fails to take food away from the poor; especially hungry children. It is just what they enjoy doing. Last year the Senate passed a similar farm bill but conservatives in the House balked because the Senate bill did not take enough food from hungry seniors, children, and working-poor Americans. As it stands now, food stamp recipients receive on average about $133.42 per month that poverty experts say is barely enough to cover two weeks in groceries, and when temporary provisions from the stimulus package expire, SNAP recipients will have even less to spend on food, regardless if the House farm bill passes or not.  However, hungry Americans and their children should not feel singled out because Republicans have left no group unaffected from their agenda of taking from Americans who are not in the richest one percent of income earners.

Over the past two years, in their drive to take everything from the people, Republicans have left few Americans untouched whether it is senior citizens’ Social Security and Medicare, low-income Americans’ Medicaid, students, seniors and minorities’ voting rights, the Affordable Care Act, meals on wheels, and even disaster relief. The dust barely settled from the devastating tornado in Oklahoma two days ago before Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn promised he will insist that before giving disaster relief to victims in his home state, the cost will have to be paid for by taking something away from other Americans in the form of spending cuts. Officials had not yet estimated the cost of the damage, or the number of lives that were lost, and Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides that has been the practice of Republicans since President Obama has been in office. Republicans have typically balked at providing disaster-relief funds when there’s a devastating storm unless they can take from other Americans, but they change their minds when their constituents are affected, but Coburn is callous enough to ransom his own constituents to take something from other Americans. The depth of Republicans’ heartless taking is not confined to spending, and it informs the true nature of their evil tendencies.

They are taking representative government in states like Michigan where the Republican governor disbanded local governments and appointed dictators in the form of an “emergency managers.” In states with Republican legislatures they have taken away a woman’s right to choose their own reproductive health and put it in the hands of religious extremists, and are taking the right to vote from students, seniors, and minorities because they do not vote for Republicans. Republicans have also taken away American workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively for decent wages, and as a canard to cut budgets have regularly taken public sector workers’ pensions and delivered the proceeds to corporations in the form of tax cuts. In Congress, Republicans are actively pursuing taking away the minimum wage as well as overtime pay that prevents most working people from falling into poverty, and they have intimated they will take away child labor laws that have been in effect for over 70 years. In an alarming number of states, Republicans are taking away women’s 14^th Amendment rights to conform to religious maniacs’ demand that single-celled organisms are living breathing “persons” worthy of the Constitutional protections, and all Americans are losing their right to clean air and water as Republicans are fighting to take away environmental protections at the behest of the Koch brothers and energy industry contributors.

There is really no end to what Republicans are going to take away from the American people, and they cannot claim it is because the nation is drowning in debt. Taking away women’s rights, voting rights, environmental protections, minimum wage, overtime pay, or religious freedoms have nothing whatsoever to do with debt and deficit and everything to do with callous disregard for the people they are elected to serve. One might hope that Republicans would be aghast that the richest nation on Earth has nearly a quarter of its children living in poverty and going hungry, or that the nation’s infrastructure ranks below every developed and several undeveloped countries, but they are unfazed and seek out more to take from the people. What is stunning, really, is their apparent anger that they are prevented from taking even more despite the harsh Draconian cuts they have imposed on the poorest Americans.

Conservatives hate change, but something changed since the people elected an African American as President and it is not Democrats and it is not the majority of the American people. It is Republicans and their vile teabag supporters who have taken what were typically universally supported policies of caring for the people and made it a carnal sin to help Americans whether they are disabled, elderly, hungry, sick, or jobless, and they seem to take the greatest pleasure in taking what little the great majority of Americans have left. Paul Ryan is right; there is an epidemic of takers in America, but they are wicked conservatives who are not taking out of selfishness or greed, but because it feeds their vapid soulless egos.

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Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.

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