'Tis the season for giving
Christmas, once again, is the time for tax cuts to the rich and good-will to all manner of private sector interests. Congress moves to adopt a budget that would cut $50 billion in funding for programs for people in need, including Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. Meanwhile, public money is being given away in the form of $60 billion in tax cuts to the rich, as well as the usual round of pork barrel funding (for projects like Alaska's 'bridge to no-where' and digital TV set-top box conversions).
Here we see in stark contrast the neo-conservative agenda to progressively dismantle government services and redistribute the nation's wealth to powerful business interests and the mega-rich. Thus it comes as little surprise to learn that the world's wealthiest nation has made no progress in improving adult literacy over the past decade. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, since 1992 adult literacy in this country has remained flat or dropped across every level of education. "So even as more people get a formal education, the literacy rate is not rising. Federal officials say this trend is puzzling and worthy of research."
Puzzling? Worthy of research? Surely this decline must bear some relationship to a decade of efforts by neoconservatives to defund national education initiatives that target the poor? And to the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind program that substitutes endless mandatory testing for educational excellence and innovation? And continuing the charge, the proposed budget will take funds away from programs such as Head Start that have a direct impact on improving literacy and education among the nation's poorest people.
Where are 'people of faith' in opposing such scandal? Not a word from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Rick Warren and their ilk on the religious right. I guess they're too busy this holiday season defending Christmas against Wal-Mart and the ACLU, opposing tolerance and religious diversity in public schools, and promoting the teaching of 'intelligent design' mythology in school science curricula.
Mainstream Christians, on the other hand, are outraged. The National Council of Churches calls the budget a 'moral disgrace', with some religious leaders 'comparing the congressional representatives who support it to the evil biblical King Herod' (who ordered the infamous massacre of the innocents).
Jim Wallis, leader of the Christian social justice group Sojourners, said the proposed federal budget is the real 'Christmas scandal' this December. "This budget and the tax cuts fill the rich with good things and sends the poor away hungry."
Now there's a voice in the wilderness...