'A Good Day To Be Ashamed of Our Government'

Like so many of you, I am simply shamed by the "compromise" the U.S. Congress agreed to with the budget bill. It was a textbook example of bullying, blackmail, cowardice, shortsightedness, limited vision, greed, avarice and a complete failure to recognize the needs and wishes of the bulk of the American population.

As the dust settles, we get to see on a daily basis the intensified suffering of the people on the lower end and in the middle of the economic spectrum. Sick children, dependent old people and those who have spent an entire career in vulnerable industries will be affected first and most severely by this extreme example of Republican callousness in the name of budgetary oversight.

Republicans simply can't stand most of us except when voting time comes around. They have no time for you if you are not wealthy and powerful. They honestly believe that if you are poor, you deserve to be poor and don't see how they could possibly have had a hand--a major hand--in your poverty.

If there were truly oversight here, we would all have given something in the name of balancing the budget and stabilizing an economy out of control (primarily because of Republican over-spending and under-taxing). The sacrifice would be shared, as any good nation would have it. That is not the case. The people who could easily give the most--the overstuffed-rich Rush Limbaughs of the world--are asked to give nothing while young families must put their dreams on hold and dare not imagine a comfortable future.

Today is a good day to be ashamed of our government. It has failed us on every level and has done something a large number of wars has not accomplished: defeated our national passion for goodness, honesty, generosity and compassion. Those fine characteristics have been replaced--perhaps for good--with an every-person-for-himself limited vision that cannot work. Even in the short run.

(Graphic: economicnoise.com)