The Gop Congress Con Is The Gop Congress On The Right Track In Trying To Change The Country’s Direction? Or Is It Pandering To Business Special Interests At The Expense Of The Poor?
On March 19, more than 1,000 people, many of them children, rallied outside the Capitol in Washington to protest a proposed cutback in the school lunch program - a cutback which is just one of many excessive and cruel budget proposals the Republican majority in Congress is trying to hammer into law.
The theme of the rally was “Pick on Someone Your Own Size,” which was another way of saying that the GOP bullies might consider spreading the budget-cutting pain around, rather than continuing their obscene offensive against the young, the poor, the crippled, the weak and the helpless.
The Republican reaction to the rally was interesting. Amazing, even. Spokesmen for the party denounced the protest organizers as exploiters of children and defenders of special interests.
“Exploiters of children”! What an accusation from a party that is trying to throw poor children off the welfare rolls, a party that would eliminate federal nutritional standards for school meals, a party that would cut benefits for handicapped children, a party that would reduce protection for abused and neglected children, even though reported cases of abuse and neglect tripled between 1980 and 1992. Please, a reality check.
And “defenders of special interests”? A Republican in the era of Newt Gingrich can say that with a straight face?
The day after the rally, Richard L. Berke wrote in The New York Times:
“Indeed, many Republicans are seeking to punish groups that did not support them in the past to ensure that they never again are abandoned. While Democrats never have been timid about hitting up lobbyists, Republicans are going even further, to the point of dictating whom business groups should hire.”
The cold truth is that the Republicans currently in Congress are raising the phenomenon of special interests to dangerous new heights.
The lead paragraph of a Washington Post article on March 12 said:
“The day before the Republicans formally took control of Congress, Rep. Tom DeLay strolled to a meeting in the rear conference room of his spacious new leadership suite on the first floor of the Capitol. The dapper Texas congressman, soon to be sworn in as House majority whip, saw before him a group of lobbyists representing some of the biggest companies in America, assembled on mismatched chairs amid packing boxes, a huge unplugged copying machine and constantly ringing telephones.”
The eager lobbyists had wasted no time in taking up DeLay’s offer to collaborate in drafting legislation that would scrap federal safety and environmental rules which big business feels are too tough.
The mind boggles at the very idea of a Newt Gingrich Republican criticizing anyone else as a captive of special interests. Republicans aggressively hunt down special interests and demand to be taken captive - if, of course, those interests have lots of money.
And when it comes time to make sacrifices to bring the federal deficit under control, those special interests are spared. No pain is inflicted there. The Republican zeal for budget cuts comes to an abrupt halt in the face of the real special interests.
The so-called GOP “Contract With America” actually is a contract with big business. Keep in mind the lobbyists writing legislation in Tom DeLay’s office. They weren’t representatives of the American people, poor or middle class. They represented the real beneficiaries of the GOP contract.
According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 24 percent of all American children under the age of 6 are poor. Under the twisted values of the new Republican majority, these children become like wounded swimmers in shark-infested waters. Their very vulnerability is a signal that they should be attacked.
James Weill, general counsel of the Children’s Defense League, said, “They are taking that part of the American population that is in the deepest trouble to begin with, the group with the highest poverty, the greatest vulnerability, and because they are so politically powerless, they are attacking them the most. That, to me, is the worst aspect of what they are doing.”
xxxx The GOP Congress Pro Is the GOP Congress on the right track in trying to change the country’s direction? Or is it pandering to business special interests at the expense of the poor?