Does a $265,000 Tax Benefit to Millionaires reflect the budgetary times we’re in?

Here’s a blunt assessment of Paul Ryan’s cuts to the poor and middle class by radio commentator Jim Hightower:

Stardem: Of all things, GOP lawmakers hacked $8 billion from next year's food stamp funds a well-run, widely popular and effective program that helps millions of hard-hit American families stave off some of the pain of poverty. Maybe so, concede Ryan & Company, but the program is out of control, havng added some 13 million people in the last three years.

Well, gosh, Paul, welcome to the real America where joblessness is rampant, wages are down, and the middle class is tumbling into poverty. Food stamp use is supposed to increase in such times. It means the program is working.

Still, retorts a Ryan henchman, everyone must sacrifice to lower the deficit, so these cuts are merely "reflecting the budgetary times we're in." Really? Then why does your budget give an average of $265,000 a year in more tax benefits to millionaires?

Paul the Pious says he's preventing poor families from the moral horror of being "dependent on government."

Just imagine their gratitude! And imagine Ryan's embarrassment that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops dared to contradict his divine rationalization, bluntly calling the cuts "unjustified and wrong."

But the idea's put out by the Ryan royalty plan repeat the mistakes described by Charles Dickens:

Alibi: The unspoken corollary is that the poor should be grateful that we are freeing them from the shackles of big government. Now when they die penniless, they will die free.

It boggles the mind to try to come to grips with Ryan’s premise that the wealthiest Americans, if they don’t have to pay higher income taxes, will voluntarily choose to spend their money on charities that serve the poor. We’ve seen that theory tested in the past. Charles Dickens described the natural outcome in his novels about poorhouses, street beggars and pinched-faced orphans.

Ryan and most of the Tea Party crowd speak of big government as if it were a disembodied, evil thing with an existence quite apart from our own.

Government is us, not something apart. We choose our leaders. We deselect our unresponsive leaders. We are democracy. If it isn’t working, we have to correct it. We really don’t need to ask the fine lords and ladies of the 1 percent to take over.