Tom Paine
by Karen Dolan

12/21/05

House Republicans are home now decrying the 'War on Christmas,' their houses festooned with lights and pretty red bows. It's hard not to wonder if their Christmas spirit is blunted at all by the big lump of coal they recently gave America's poor and working families. Republicans have wished the nation’s least privileged citizens a 'Merry Christmas' by whacking our already anemic social safety net system. Eager to return home for the holidays, GOP leaders in the House and their counterparts in the Senate rushed out a budget agreement that’s stingy enough to put the Grinch to shame. They agreed on a budget that doles out $39.7 billion in cuts over five years, including spending reductions for Medicaid and Medicare, child support enforcement, foster care, welfare system benefits and student loans. The changes to the welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), are particularly offensive because the House Republicans sneaked them into the bill. Normally, changes to welfare rules are debated and voted on as separate bills, and the changes snuck into this bill have been defeated four years in a row...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051221/tiny_tim_v_scrooge.php


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp