I have been reading about some of these cuts daily. They will NOT back off their tax cuts, which are so deep that even our infrastructure and schools will go begging. They are cutting food programs for needy children, cutting back hiring of teachers.
In one county alone they are hiring 900 fewer teachers this year. Yet the student population went up. There is just no money for them.
I could go on.
The Orlando Sentinel has a column that puts in perspective.
Ask yourself: What would Jesus cut?Florida lawmakers are slashing services to the poor with a rusty sling blade. They do that rather than eliminate special-interest tax exemptions for corporations and wealthy residents.
And how better to press the case than with Jesus' own words:
Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me. Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto me.
Would the "least of these" be the 8,000 terminal Medicaid patients who may be eliminated from hospice care because of budget cuts? In their final days do we deny them some small measure of comfort, even if it is nothing more than a caring face at the end?
Would the "least of these" be low-income transplant patients, whose medications are on the budget chopping block?
They are not sparing any group.
No needy group is spared, including the elderly. Back in the early 2000s, after reports of rampant abuse of nursing-home patients, the state enacted reforms designed to increase staffing. Now nursing homes are about to get cut, and staffing levels will go down.
The inevitable result will once again be frail old people suffering in their beds, some ignored, some abused, some dying.
The saddest thing to hear are the Republicans on TV defending these tax cuts and cutbacks. They have a mantra....let the people keep their money. Let them keep their money in their own pockets.
Marco Rubio is Jeb's guy in the Florida legislature. Here are his words.
House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, notes that all this cutting will leave us "better off" in the long run. "It is the kind of budget the people of Florida need at a time like this," he said.
The arrogance is stunning.
They don't care what the people think. They don't care what the media thinks. There is a cabal of Jebbites who don't even care what the rest of their Republican cohorts think.
They simply do not care.
God will judge them someday, but the suffering they are unloosing is happening now.