More tax cuts for billionaires while cutting food stamps for poor kids?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/10/AR2005111002243.html

The Washington Post's Donna Britt tells it like it is. It's a shame she's hidden in the Metro section. This stuff needs to be on the front page.

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"It's obscene that this nation's 347 billionaires -- whose net worth exceeds $1 trillion and who received massive tax cuts in 2001, 2003 and last year -- could get additional tax cuts while some poor kids get less medical care. Yesterday, House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested that GOP leaders would make more concessions, adding, 'I think we'll have the votes next week.'"
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how much is the Graham family's "taxbreak"?

......The proposed budget cuts would eliminate some Medicaid protections instituted in the 1960s, when half of young military draftees were being turned away because of physical, mental and developmental conditions that basic health care might have prevented, says Children's Defense Fund Child Health Director Alison Buist.

Republican leaders had to delay the vote despite having made major concessions on oil and gas exploration and drilling. Moderates still opposed provisions that would have curbed vital social services. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the bill promoted "cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class and hurting those who need our help most."

Of course, for many people the phrase "needy Americans" conjures images of job-allergic welfare moms. In fact, 87 percent of uninsured children have at least one employed parent. "So you have lots of parents trying to do the right thing who can't get ahead," Buist says. "Their kid has an asthma attack, they take off work and they lose their job. . . . We think, 'I have a co-pay.' But we don't realize how poor is poor." According to the federal poverty level, that's $16,090 a year for a family of three -- "$309 a week to pay for food and rent and heat and transportation," Buist says. For a family living on that amount, "a $5 co-pay and a premium are a lot of money."

Not only were congressional Republicans proposing cuts to programs that help the helpless, but in the next few weeks they could give $70 billion in tax relief to the nation's wealthiest citizens -- which enrages CDF Chief Executive Marian Wright Edelman as much as it baffles her. "Who takes from the poor to give to the rich in times like these?" she asks.

"those living in extreme poverty -- annual income below $7,610 for a family of three -- increased by 20 percent" in the last 4 years.

WTF?!

To hide it in the Metro section is criminal!