Each week, with the debate inside the beltway between Democrats and Republicans regarding the deficit and debt ceiling, all we hear is that nothing is being done. However, under the table, Republicans are getting a lot done to the detriment of the poor, seniors and African Americans.
Just this week, the House of Representatives debated the Republican’s 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, which will cut funding for food-assistance programs that will impact millions. Their cuts also will include targeting the prevention of $800 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) as well as cut $38 million from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSIP) and $63 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAB).
The CSFP gives food assistance to 600,000 low-income families monthly, 96 percent of which are elderly, and TEFAP provides national emergency food-bank networks with foods that are to be stored and distributed to needy families.
All of this while the GOP is planning to increase defense spending by $17 billion and just passed a bill this week that would cut $87 million from the Food and Drug Administration and $35 million from the USDA’s food safety and inspection service. Although cuts to CSIP and TEFAB are about the same as the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires for a single day, the GOP are not finished.
GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota has assembled a tax plan that would involve a massive corporate tax cut and tax increase on the working poor, while reducing taxes on the richest income-earners. In addition, the GOP-dominated Congress “voted to eliminate funding for homeless veterans, slash community health centers serving low-income families and pass a fiscal year 2011 budget that would force 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs” while “taxpayer-funded sponsorship of NASCAR racing teams was protected.” –torrance t. stephens, ph.d.
