This is how these f**ks do us. $500bil for Iraq and crumbs for U.S. poor

[bigtree]

Food stamps won't offset heating bills

December 15, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has denied requests from five states to increase food stamps for low-income families facing higher heating bills this winter.

Maine, New York, Kansas, Virginia and South Carolina sought to raise monthly food-stamp allotments by projecting what families will pay to heat their homes. The increases would have ranged from $8 to about $30 a month for families who pay their own utility bills.

The Energy Department has forecast an average 25% increase in heating bills this winter. Research shows that when utility bills rise, some poor families reduce food purchases.


>>>>The Agriculture Department, which runs the food-stamp program, said the best solution to rising utility bills is an increase in the heating assistance program for people with low incomes.

The administration supports a $1-billion increase (in the heating assistance program), now pending in Congress. Advocates for poor people say that up to $4 billion is needed.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051215/NEWS07/512150498/1009

[babylonsister]

1. I predict a lot of people will freeze to death this winter. nt

[acmejack]

3. I fear you're right

Little do the heartless care, not until the freezing burn their mansions for heat.

[aquart]

2. One of the first things Bush eliminated

Was a federal program to help pay utility bills.

[INdemo]

4. Along with Fed Grants for college students

[bigtree]

5. He sent an amazing budget to Congress in Feb.

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion federal budget yesterday that is designed to project U.S. power and priorities overseas while squeezing government programs at home but would not make a sizable dent in the nation's record deficit next year, despite politically painful cuts.

(Here is the meat of the cuts)

Relying on the nation's stronger economic performance, the Bush budget would increase overall spending by 3.6 percent in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 and embody a strong commitment to security. An extra 4.8 percent would be devoted to the Defense Department for a cumulative 38.6 percent increase over the past five years, and the Department of Homeland Security would receive almost 7 percent more, much of it coming from a $3-per-flight tax increase on airline tickets. State Department and foreign aid spending would go up 15.7 percent.

To offset those increases, the rest of the discretionary budget would fall almost 1 percent, with programs for health, education, the environment, farming and housing taking the biggest hits. Nine of the 15 Cabinet departments would lose funding, including Housing and Urban Development (11.5 percent), Agriculture (9.6 percent), and Transportation (6.7 percent).

The Environmental Protection Agency would be cut 5.6 percent and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 12.4 percent, and the White House said it would take a 1.7 percent reduction in its spending. Altogether, about 150 programs would be eliminated or drastically scaled back, one third of them education-related.

article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4563-2005Feb7.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. What part of compassionate conservatism don't you

understand???

[bigtree]

7. I'm just a pessimist , Bush says . . .

". . . we often heard pessimists telling us that our best days are behind us, and that the future belongs to others. Our grandparents heard the pessimists in the 1930s and 1940s say that the future belonged to the central planners. Our parents heard the pessimists again in the 1950s, when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite. Some of us remember hearing the pessimists in the 1970s and 1980s, when we were told that America was tired and could no longer compete with Japan. At that moment, Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were just beginning to kick in (edit: a kick in the guts of the nation's poor), and that set off one of the largest economic expansions in history. One newspaper editorialized about "the stench of failure" during that period of time."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051205-4.html