Once again, the rich are protected.

First, let's lead off with the loaded term used here, "entitlements" which was introduced by the republicans to criticize social welfare programs, because the term entitlement evokes the false images of the "cadillac welfare moms" that Reagan used to rely so heavily on.

Second, let's just take a minute to notice that the Bush admin and the Republican Congress are attempting to pay for Katrina rebuilding by cutting assistance to the poor, and leaving the debt ballooning upper class tax cuts in place.

Remember the language, "Katrina has revealed the true problems of poverty and class in our nation."

Well, here are those problems writ large.

House Republican leaders raised the stakes this week in a looming budgetary showdown, pledging to lift the target of entitlement cuts from $35 billion to $50 billion, impose across-the-board spending cuts and rescind spending already approved -- all to offset the cost of hurricane relief. .......

Sixteen committees in the House and Senate face an Oct. 26 deadline to produce $35 billion in budget savings over five years, mainly from entitlement programs for the poor, such as food stamps, Medicaid and student loans.

(And Hurrah????? We're only going into debt at $1,000 per american per year vs. $1,250)

The push for austerity comes amid some good budget news. The federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 came in at $317 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said, or 2.6 percent of the economy. That is nearly $100 billion less than the 2004 deficit and $14 billion less than what the CBO projected just eight weeks ago. ........

I'm not a particularly strong supporter of some of the more extreme social welfare programs, but I gotta say this; It is unconscionable to give government beneficence to the wealthy while borrowing money to pay for the running of our government. It is unconscionable to give huge tax breaks to a small percentage of our society while thirty to forty times as many people have no health coverage which just happens to balance out to about the same amount.

And don't give me that supply side, growing the economy bullshit. I'm around alot of people who got significant advantage from those sizeable tax cuts, and most of that money was just filed away like the rest, savings, IRA's, that sort of thing. They didn't go out and spend it; it didn't flow quickly back into the economy.

If you want to jumpstart the economy, give a couple hundred bucks to a family of four who are barely scraping by. They will spend it before the week is out, and then it will be back in the economy boosting us all.

Mike