The Case for Life

This past week's events in the Terri Schiavo case were traumatic for her family and for others throughout the United States who have had to make similar decisions in the past.  President Bush made the comment (I am paraphrasing) that whenever we err as a nation, we should err on the side of LIFE.  After I heard that comment, I waited for some courageous Senator to stand up in the U.S. Senate, quote the President, and propose a bill to bring our troops home from Iraq!!  Did any courageous person stand up and do so?  Of course not.  Which begs the question, "Are there any courageous people in Congress any more?"

When I hear the news that the President has proposed a budget that will essentially end Head Start, Upward Bound, Medicaid, food stamps and child-care assistance for the working poor, nutrition assistance for pregnant low-income women, and education funding (at a time when the federal government is placing additional requirements on states), I become sickened by the fact that this administration "believes in preserving life."  Isn't it ironic that the only lives the neo-cons want to preserve are the unborn and the debilitated while ignoring:  hungry children of poor families; the young men and women of our Armed Forces; wrongly convicted death-row inmates; men, women, and children suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other terminal illnesses that currently have no cure; and, the innocents who are losing their lives in Iraq and other nations of the world because of the U.S.'s incompetent management of its foreign relations and post-war planning.

At what point do we finally speak out against the evil actions of this President?  Just because the man CLAIMS a moral compass with respect to TWO emotionally charged issues does not mean that he is a MORAL man at all.  In fact, if we evaluate his performance on every moral issue--FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY, LIFE, LIBERTY--how can we say that he has any moral center at all?  I would argue that in fact, this President has the moral aptitude of a three-year old child--and that is being generous, because I am not certain he is capable of evaluating complex moral issues even at that level.

Nevertheless, I have included a commentary from Bob Herbert that I think makes my case much better than I can.  Enjoy!

From the NYTimes Op/Ed page--March 25, 2005 

The Era of Exploitation

By BOB HERBERT

Congress is in recess and the press has gone berserk over the Terri Schiavo case. So very little attention is being paid to pending budget proposals that are scandalously unfair, but that pretty accurately reflect the kind of country the U.S. has become.

President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.

F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P.

While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth.

President Bush has proposed more than $200 billion worth of cuts in domestic discretionary programs over the next five years, and cuts of $26 billion in entitlement programs. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzed the president's proposal, said:

"Figures in the budget show that child-care assistance would be ended for 300,000 low-income children by 2009. The food stamp cut would terminate food stamp aid for approximately 300,000 low-income people, most of whom are low-income working families with children. Reduced Medicaid funding most certainly would cause many states to cut their Medicaid programs, increasing the ranks of the uninsured."

Education funding would be cut beginning next year, and the cuts would grow larger in succeeding years. Food assistance for pregnant women, infants and children would be cut. Funding for H.I.V. and AIDS treatment would be cut by more than half a billion dollars over five years. Support for environmental protection programs would be sharply curtailed. And so on.

Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control. But they have trouble keeping a straight face when they tell that story. Laden with tax cuts, the president's proposal will result in an increase, not a decrease, in the deficit. Shared sacrifice is anathema to the big-money crowd.

The House has passed a budget that is similar to the president's, except it contains even deeper cuts in programs that affect the poor. In the Senate, a handful of Republicans balked at the cuts proposed for Medicaid. Casting their votes with the Democrats, they were able to eliminate the cuts from the Senate budget proposal. The Senate also added $5.4 billion in education funding for 2006.

All the budgets contain more than $100 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, which makes a mockery of the G.O.P.'s budget-balancing rhetoric. When Congress returns from its Easter recess, the Republican leadership will try to reconcile the differences in the various proposals. Whatever happens will be bad news for ordinary Americans. Big cuts are coming.

The advances in areas like education, antipoverty programs, health services, environmental protection and food safety were achieved after struggles that, in some cases, took many decades. To slide backward now (hurting millions of people in the process) because of a desire to siphon funds from those programs and hand them over as tax cuts to the wealthiest members of our society, is obscene.

This is not a huge national story. It's just the way things are. It was Herbert Hoover who said: "You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They're too damn greedy."

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com