Last week, the House approved a draconian bill, HR 5652: The Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012.
Toward the end of last year, Congress mandated the creation of a special bipartisan committee to produce a blueprint for balancing the budget. Spending cuts were mandated across the board except for Medicare and Social Security. However, the three Republicans and three Democrats assigned to this "super-committee", the Simpson-Bowles Commission, were unable to devise a plan that Congress was willing to sign off on regarding distribution of these cuts, even after a lengthy period of sequestration.
Owing to the lack of such consensus, automatic cuts have been scheduled in equal portions from the social and the military sides of the ledger. HR 5652 would largely spare the military from the fiscal chopping block, instead imposing those scheduled cuts on the social side in addition to the already-mandated ones. This would further eviscerate such lifeline-sustaining programs as food stamps, Medicaid, and children's health care, as well as nutrition programs. Grants to states would also get butchered, affecting among other things, education. And of course, raising taxes for the very wealthy would be unthinkable!
Neither HR 5652 nor the Republican budget, The Path to Prosperity, would currently survive a vote in the Senate or a Presidential veto. But if either of these items was to ever be enacted, the consequences could be potentially lethal for many Americans --- akin to legislative violence: Not violence by the sword nor violence by the gun, but instead, violence by the stroke of a legislative pen!
Millions of families and individuals could well be condemned to living out their days under a toxic shroud of hopelessness and despair --- and, in some cases, dying long before their time. Their deaths might arrive not as swiftly as a bullet between the eyes, but often just as surely.
Is this the future that too many Republicans envision for us?
Have they no shame?
Dan, I hope you're right, that this House
ReplyDeleteBill won't pass the Senate and the White House, but I'm not at all reassured....
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ReplyDeleteAmber, no self-respecting Democratic senator would support this cruel measure. Furthermore, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if retiring Senators Snowe and Lugar vote with the Democrats.
ReplyDeleteHypothetically, if the Dems believed that there WAS any cause for concern, they could give their Repub colleagues a hefty dose of their own castor oil: y'know, the filibuster!