Stealing From US & Giving To Iraq, Iran, Big Business, Haliburton, & Millionaires

Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing: $100 Billion Is Spent Without Offsetting Cuts

It is a Christian principle that god-fearing believers are called to be good stewards of the resources and blessings that are provided. It is a Republican principle that government should remain small, non-intrusive, and prudent in how taxes are spent. It is a long-standing plank of the Republican platform that tax cuts must be accompanied by spending cutbacks to offset the loss of revenue (usually accomplished by cutting back on domestic services like health care, education funding, environmental protection, or fire/police/EMS funding). How than can anyone in the Republican-controlled, ultra-conservative Christian Right dominated congress justify raising the debt ceiling for the federal government?

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend's GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, at which virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit.

The House voted 348 to 71 to approve a $92 billion measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing hurricane relief, after members rejected calls from conservatives to pay for at least some of that spending with budget cuts. On the other side of the Capitol, senators considering a budget blueprint for fiscal 2007 voted to effectively breach their own firm limits on spending by at least $16 billion to boost programs they said have been starved for funding.

"You're talking about the guts of critical domestic programs," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said after the Senate voted 73 to 27 to increase spending on health, education and labor programs by $7 billion over the amount allotted in a 2007 budget blueprint. "All the talk in Memphis doesn't comport with the reality of these important programs."

I know how we can save about $100 billion a year... withdraw from Iraq and let them sort out their own problems...

Which brings me to another matter that is just bugging the ever living crap out of me... President Bush is STILL touting the change of regime in Iraq as being necessary for US safety and security. He is still making the case that the invasion of Iraq under the Hussein regime made our world and our nation safer. When is he going to come to terms with the reality that there are no WMDs, there were no Al-Qaeda training camps, and that other nations--like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, India, Iran, North Korea, former Soviet Bloc nations, etc.--are greater threats than Iraq ever has been or ever will be? When will he realize that the deal with India is a greater threat to our national security and national interests than are the all of the insurgents in Iraq? When is he going to stop wasting our hard-earned tax dollars on foreign aid, regime change and an ideological agenda devoid of sound reasoning? When is he going to stop providing huge chunks of corporate welfare to big business and provide real tax relief to the vast majority of US...

The trouble is that Dubya thinks he is really Robin Hood and only those he has chosen are worthy of the benefits of American tax dollars.