President Obama's Budget Proposes LIHEAP Cuts

In President Obama’s proposed budget for 2012 is a huge cut to LIHEAP – the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. I find this absolutely unbelievable.

The proposed budget cuts the fund from $5.1 billion to $2.5 billion. What does he hope to gain by doing this, but to drive some folks deeper into debt or possibly to their death? Can he not find any better places to cut what is a nominal amount? Is there not an army base in Gowanaland that can’t be closed?

Maybe we should begin the process of selling off our national parks? Look, Barack, if you want to make the Republicans like you, don’t kill the old and poor. Sell them a nice pretty national park to drill for oil in. The rich and the Republicans are always looking for someplace to drill.

As we go through one of the hardest winters in a long time in which the LIHEAP fund is already inadequate to cover the needs in this country, you want to slice it in half? Remember when you used to live in Chicago? Got pretty damned cold there didn’t it? Maybe it’s time to drop into the old neighborhood and ask the folks what they think of this idea.

And while you are there will you tell Dick Durbin to quit talking about cutting Social Security? SS has a big surplus. And with a slight adjustment its funds could last in perpetuity. Maybe Sen. Dick needs to talk to real people also.

Here is an idea. I will honor your fear of raising taxes on the rich. May I respectfully suggest assessing some user fees on those who get the benefits from having our armies fight wars in places like Afghanistan or Iraq? Look I got to pay a fee to go to public parks these days. Why not make those who are using our armies pay for it?
  
Say in Iraq when the oil fields were auctioned off to the oil companies there should have been some user fee for the army stealing that oil attached. And there should be a fee to keep our army there for the oil companies. Not a tax, a User’s Fee. Like $100 billion a year for Exxon. Look at their profits – they can afford it.
   
There should be a user’s fee for stock transactions. This is real. Many counties currently charge about a tenth of a penny per stock transaction. This would raise billions.
  
How about getting real marijuana while we are at it? Marijuana is much less harmful than alcohol or nicotine. Let’s make it legal and tax it! This would raise bundles of billions while cutting housing inmates in our jails.
  
And maybe with these new revenue sources, you could find a couple pennies for the poor so they don’t literally freeze to death?

Dave
Bradley
E-mail Dave here

Dave Bradley is a self-described
retired observer of American politics “trying to figure out how we got
so screwed up.”  An
Iowa City native currently living in West Liberty,  Dave and his wife
Carol have two grown children who “sadly had to leave the state to find
decent paying jobs.“