Conyers Questions Republicans' Morality in Federal Budget
Criticizes the Majority for Putting the Rich and Powerful over Those in Need

"The Republican Party has spent decades trying to co-opt morality, pushing voters to their side by claiming to represent American values. Today, however, the Republicans have abandoned any pretense of concerns for working families by producing the most cold-hearted, wrong-headed priorities in a federal budget in recent memory.

The FY 2006 budget that Congress is sending to the president gives more tax cuts to the wealthy and reduces or ends over 150 domestic programs that would assist children, schools, health programs and job creation. And as Republicans try to rally the country around social security privatization by claiming the program will soon run out of money, this budget finances its deficits with every cent of the Social Security Trust Fund surplus. Tragically, this budget cuts Medicaid by about $35 billion because, as Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg put it, the program 'is growing far too fast for us to be able to afford it.'

The Democratic alternative successfully would have balanced our social commitments and the need to balance our budget. It includes budget enforcement measures to protect social security, and it provides $4.5 billion more for appropriated education and training programs than the Republican budget for 2006 and $41 billion more over the next five years. Democrats proposed $1.6 billion more than the Republican budget for veterans programs for 2006 and $17 billion more over five years. It provided $2 billion more than the Republican budget for 2006 and $9 billion more over five years for Community Development Block Grants. To top it off, the Democrats' proposal would have balanced the budget again by 2012.

But the disagreement over this budget is not about partisan differences. The question is one of morality. The cuts in this budget are not just wrong-headed. Republicans need to face the reality that these budget cuts will directly harm millions of Americans. How can the Republican Party honestly claim to represent moral values when they cannot "afford" health care for those who need help the most, but spend three times as much on tax cuts for those who need help the least.

To be moral, however, requires more than just lip service. Morality means actually caring about people, showing compassion when faced with those in need and making sacrifices in order to help those people. This kind of morality, it seems, is extinct in the Republican Party."

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