Big, bad budgets

Capitol Hill budget bills cut services for the poor and cut taxes for the rich, an outrage if allowed to stand

It's tough to imagine the country that would cheer the U.S. House and Senate's latest work on the federal budget, but let's try: Everyone would be millionaires with businesses to run or investment portfolios to manage. Couples wouldn't divorce, and college tuition for their kids would come from ample bank accounts. As for a chicken in every pot, there would be that and full refrigerators, as well.

Dream on.

The United States may well be the wealthiest country the world has ever seen, but still the ranks of the U.S. poor are growing. About half of all marriages end in divorce and many of the resulting single-parent households struggle to put food on the table, let alone pay for college.

The House budget bill passed early yesterday doesn't match these realities.

According to news reports, the House aims to take $50 billion off the deficit -- a sliver off an amount estimated at $300 billion to $400 billion -- by disgracefully cutting programs that help the poor.

Nearly a quarter of a million people would lose food stamps. Federal help for child support enforcement efforts would dwindle, as would Pell grants for college students and, effectively, home heating assistance money for a winter of sharply higher rates. (North Carolina leaders wisely budgeted more to help poor people pay their heating bills this winter.)

Subsidies that help some 330,000 working families with child care costs would be eliminated within five years unless states provide them. Only the closeness of the 217-215 vote points to the existence of humanity in the House.

To garner the last few needed votes, House leaders evidently restored some money for food stamps, school lunch programs and Medicaid. The long-sought permission for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge fortunately fell by the wayside, too. Yet it remains in Senate legislation and dangerously subject to horse trading.

What makes the House Republicans' spending bill look especially bad is the Senate Republicans' tax measure extending some, though not all, of President Bush's tax cuts.

Sure, the senators decided against extending breaks on capital gains and dividends beyond 2008 when they are set to expire. Yet they already are cutting $103,000 apiece off the tax bills of people earning $1 million or more a year.

That number helps explain earlier reports of a sharp increase in the number of millionaires in this country. Nor has it escaped the public's notice that the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, too.

The people are forgiving of most any mistakes committed by their leaders. Unfairness is intolerable.

Let that be a guiding principle for the representatives and senators who must reconcile the differences in the House and Senate budget bills. A compassionate people doesn't force choices between food and medicine, not even if it costs the rich. One would hope that when all is said and done, that kind of compassion might win out in Congress as well.