Do They Ever Learn?

Among items in the news last week was the passage of a 2006 federal budget, approved in slightly differing versions by the House and Senate, and endorsed in large part by the Bush administration. It cuts a great deal of spending on social programs that help poorer Americans. It also includes tax cuts that will primarily benefit the well off. The budget bills approve oil drilling in Alaska's ANWAR refuge, with supporters offering the specious claim that it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What it will almost certainly do is line the pockets of some oil companies and their stockholders.

Included in the spending cuts are a $35,000,000,000 reduction in food stamps, besides cuts in Medicare spending and school lunch programs. In conference, the House may try to push the food stamp cuts higher.

In itself, this is no surprise from the Bush administration and the current congressional majority. With a few largely symbolic exceptions, they've always frowned upon social spending, despite being able to dig up the money for a pointless war and, in the case of the White House, expansive and agressive PR campaigns. What does surprise me is that this plan could pass mere weeks after Hurricane Katrina gruesomely laid bare the gap between haves and have nots in the country, and the greater vulnerability of the latter group in the face of disaster, or even in ordinary life. All these leaders saw the disturbing footage (albeit reluctantly in the president's case) and pledged concern and assistance. But since then, a deadly amnesia appears to have settled over Washington. Bush may have quit drinking years ago, but his short-term memory remains severely impaired.

In church this morning, our rector warned us that on Sunday the 19th, our church would be picketed by the Reverend Fred Phelps and his traveling homophobic freakshow. They're visiting us (and three other Ann Arbor churches) in conjuction with protesting a production of The Laramie Project at U of M. St. Paul argues that by showing one's adversaries kindness, one heaps burning coals on their head. In the case of Phelps I'd rather do the heaping literally, though he'd probably relish suffering for his cause. Which might have been what Paul was getting at. Anyway...grant us forbearance, Lord...