Republicans: the Family Values Party? Right.

It's no surprise to anyone that the country is going into ever more massive debt. We need to cut corners to turn this thing around, nobody is arguing that point. Where we differ, however, is which corners should be cut. Those natsy ol' liberals like me want to make up some of the difference by making the richest people in our society actually pay taxes again.

Those family values loving Republicans like our buddy, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in the photo above? They want to take food out of schoolkids' mouths to save some cash. According to the article in today's Washington Post,

"The food stamp cuts in the House measure would knock nearly 300,000 people off nutritional assistance programs, including 70,000 legal immigrants, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Those immigrants would lose their benefits because the House measure would require legal immigrants to live in the United States for seven years before becoming eligible to receive food stamps, rather than the current five years.

"About 40,000 children would lose eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunches, the CBO estimated."

Meanwhile, according to the article,

"Republicans move in the coming weeks to cut taxes for the fifth time in as many years. Those tax cuts, totaling $70 billion over five years, would more than offset the deficit reduction that would result from the budget cuts."

I wonder who will receive those tax cuts?

The amount of dickitude exhibited by the Republican party staggers the imagination.

By the way, we have spent $216,884,337,742 (that number has jumped by several hundred thousand dollars as you were reading this sentence) on the war in Iraq. Maybe that's why we can't seem to find any money to feed 40,000 children.