There’s so much truth here — it’s the kind of thing that needs to be blasted across the front page of every newspaper and news website across the land. But there’s a reason that won’t happen…
Category: Sequester (Page 2 of 7)
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New York’s River Fund Food Pantry’s new clients are diverse—working people, seniors, single mothers—but many of them share something in common: they represent the millions of Americans who fell victim to food insecurity when the Great Recession hit in 2009, but didn’t benefit from the economic recovery.
And the worst may be yet to come..
“I believe we have a hunger crisis,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, who sits on a House committee responsible for the food stamp program. “When 50 million people in the richest country on the planet are hungry, that’s a crisis.”
There’s little sign that McGovern’s colleagues in Congress will step in to stave off the crisis. In fact, some Republicans in Congress are pushing further cuts to the food stamp program as part of broader budget negotiations that could bump an additional 4 million people off of the food stamps rolls by the end of next year.
Welcome to the Hunger Games.
WASHINGTON — Two Virginia congressmen fumed Tuesday about the damage being done to their state by the ongoing government shutdown and laid the blame squarely on a fellow Virginian, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R), for preventing lawmakers from voting on a bill to immediately end it.
During a press conference, Democratic Reps. Gerry Connolly and Jim Moran said the shutdown has hurt Virginia more than any other state. They pointed out that more than 185,000 Virginia residents are federal employees and federal spending represents about one-third of the state’s entire economy. In addition, Virginia is home to a large number of veterans who are now experiencing delays in receiving their benefits.
It’s been more than two weeks since the Senate passed a “clean” funding bill to open the government, with no strings attached. Typically, any House member could call up that bill and request a vote. But on Sept. 30, on the eve of the shutdown, Republicans quietly changed the House rules so only one person can bring that bill up: Cantor.
Moran said the rules change was “unprecedented” and has left Virginians, along with every one else, at the hands of Cantor to end the shutdown, even though he refuses to do so. The Senate-passed bill already has the votes to pass in the House and would be signed into law by the president, if it were allowed to get a vote.
“Hardest-hit state in the nation,” Moran said. “Yet the one person holding this up is the person who represents the state capital, who is the majority leader of the House.”
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company
Even if the threat of terrorists went away, none of those bold projects Glenn Greenwald described as defining American greatness would happen today. Our government is paralyzed and dysfunctional, and it’s getting worse than ever. Just ask Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, as I’m about to do.
For decades, these two political scientists were on the go-to list for Beltway pundits and reporters seeking wisdom on the curious ways of governance. But then, almost exactly a year ago to this day, they published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post headlined, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” Mann and Ornstein argued that democracy and the economy are in a crash dive, and that congressional gridlock was largely the fault of the Republican Party and its takeover by right wing radicals. What’s more, they said, the mainstream media was adding to the problem by resorting to “false equivalency,” pretending that both parties were equally at fault.
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