Boehner Plan Dumps Long-Standing (26 years) Protection for the Poor

Source: Off The Charts/

Boehner Plan Dumps Long-Standing Protection for the Poor
July 28, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Yesterday’s Washington Post described an important and welcome development: a coalition of Christian groups is urging the President and Congress to shield poor people from budget cuts in the debt-ceiling debate and other deficit-reduction packages.

Unfortunately, the article cites David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, as saying that while both House Speaker Boehner’s plan and Senate Majority Leader Reid’s plan call for deep, unspecified spending cuts that would likely hurt the poor, the Boehner plan appears to exempt “means-tested” programs like Medicaid and food stamps from the automatic, across-the-board cuts that it would impose in certain budgetary circumstances. But David — a dedicated moral leader for whom I have great admiration — was given confusing information about the Boehner plan. The truth is the reverse of what the article reports him as saying.

For 26 years, all budget legislation that would trigger across-the-board cuts if Congress fails to meet a fiscal target has exempted the basic low-income (or “means-tested”) entitlement programs from those cuts. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws of 1985 and 1990, the deficit reduction agreement of 1990, and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 — all bipartisan pieces of legislation — included that exemption. So did last year’s “pay-as-you-go” law, which requires Congress to offset the cost of new tax cuts or increases in entitlement programs so they don’t increase the deficit. Congress has never enacted a law with an across-the-board cut mechanism that subjects core assistance for the poor to these cuts.

But in the last few weeks, House Republicans have advanced two major pieces of legislation that would do just that. Both the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,” which the House passed last week, and the new Boehner debt-ceiling proposal drop all of the low-income exemptions that have been part of every previous across-the-board cut mechanism since 1985.

Read more: http://www.offthechartsblog.org/boehner-plan-dumps-long-standing-protection-for-the-poor/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=TWITTER&utm_campaign=CBPPTwitter

has always been to let the poor die. Asshats

a Democrat.

It's as simple as that.

raised, WE WON!!!!11!

Sounds like not so much

Not even a little bit. We are the parties that are being royally screwed by all plans - most certainly by the presidents' & Democrats plans too.

Isaiah 10:1-4
New International Version (NIV)
Isaiah 10

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
4 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.