By: Hrafnkell HaraldssonJun. 16th, 2011more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Jack Kingston: Making Easy Choices for Millionaires

“Blessed are the rich, for yours is the kingdom of God.” – The Republican Beatitudes

I previously reported (June 6, 2011) on the House’s proposed cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) funding. I compared the money saved by these cuts to the billions handed to the oil industry and the Bush era tax cuts offered to millionaires. It is clear that the Republicans care more for the oil companies that line their pockets and for top 2 percent of our nation’s wealthy than they do for the millions who live at or below the poverty line. It’s unconscionable that the Republicans feel these people should pay, that these people should suffer and starve – women and children - so  that the rich can have a bit more to stash away in non-taxable foreign bank accounts.

But that’s not the end of the story. The Center for American Progress Reports:

This week the House will debate a GOP proposal to cut $101 million from food assistance for low-income seniors and local food banks. The bill slashes $38 million (a 22 percent cut) from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, or CSFP, which provides nutritious food packages to more than 600,000 low-income families every month (96 percent of whom are seniors). The bill also cuts $63 million from The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, which provides our nation’s emergency food bank network with food commodities and storage and distribution support. These cuts come at a time when food prices are rising and food banks are already struggling to serve their existing caseload.

The Republicans are not only targeting women and children in need, but they are targeting the elderly. All so the rich can be a bit richer. If money is really that tight that we have to make cuts like this, why do the poor and needy have to pay, but not the rich? Are they exempt from the common laws of humanity that the rest of us are subject to?

It seems so. And prepare to be horrified:

The cost of the cuts to WIC amount to just one week of the Bush tax cuts to millionaires that the Republicans insisted on being extended.

Here’s the math: The deal struck last December to extend the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush gave the average millionaire a tax break of $139,199 for 2011, according to the Tax Policy Center, or nearly $2,700 per week. Given that about 321,000 households reported incomes of more than $1 million in the most recent year for which there are data from the Internal Revenue Service, that means the Bush tax cuts provide millionaires with about $860 million in tax breaks every week—more than enough to stave off the $833 million in proposed cuts to WIC.

The cost of cuts to CSFP and TEFAP amount to just one day of the Bush tax cuts to millionaires that the Republicans insisted on being ex tended.

Are you angry yet? If you aren’t, why not?

As Melissa Boteach noted,

Agriculture Subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston patted himself on the back for “making some of the tough choices necessary to right the ship.”

It wasn’t a tough choice for Kingston. He wasn’t taking money or food away from himself, his wife or daughter or their children. Not a tough choice at all for a Republican plutocrat to screw over the üntermenschen at the expense of the rich.

None of these people would have to suffer if the Republicans would have simply let the Bush era tax cuts for millionaires expire. Think of the hundreds of thousands of elderly people, women, and children, who will suffer now. Think of the few hundred thousand rich who don’t need more money but will have more money on the backs of this suffering. The Republican Party has elevated our nations wealthy to the status of feudal overlords and relegated the women, children and elderly to the status of serfs, whose sole purpose in life is to make their lords richer.

This is the Republican America we have been promised. All we have to do is vote for them.  But remember this: as the example of Michigan shows, you will get only this one last vote, because once you vote them in, you lose your right to vote and your right to have elected officials make decisions in your communities.  This one last vote for the Republican Party will mean the end of democracy for everyone. If you grew up with a life’s dream of being a serf for a Republican religio-corporate plutocracy, then go for it, vote Republican. But is that really what you grew up wanting to be?

Tax cut graphic from Center for American Progress