Education Schmeducation!

Spoiler Alert: As a mom, as an educator, and as a very disillusioned and frustrated U.S. citizen, I'm hopping mad about what the Republican party is doing right now, and I'm about to express that. Forcefully.

This week, the Republican controlled House of Representatives voted to increase the military's budget by double-digits. (That's billions, by the way. Double digit billions.) This is at the same time they are supposedly fighting to decrease our nation's debt. Actually, they're holding raising the debt ceiling hostage in order to get more of what their special interest groups want, rather than what our country actually needs in order to grow, to prosper, and to compete in our global economy. What do the Republicans want? Major cuts to all social services intended to help the poor, the elderly, and children, of course. Who cares about the poor? I mean, come ON. They should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps like everybody else, right? And, children? Who needs 'em? Let 'em take care of themselves!
Along with that, our Republican representatives want to make sure that we don't invest in our country's future by:

1) Investing in the development of renewable energy resources. After all, why should we worry about, or take any responsibility for, global warming and other threats to our environment, right? Let's just leave that to places like Norway to figure out. And, why should we actually attempt to be innovative and creative and come up with new ideas that we can then export to other countries, when we can just sit back and wait for OTHER countries to invent things that we can then buy from them?

2) Improving our country's falling-apart infrastructure. A major job creator, by the way. Hmmmm...

3) And, have I mentioned investing in educating America's youth, so that our entire country can benefit? Republicans don't seem to see anything wrong with continuing to cut and cut and cut education funding, pretty much guaranteeing that the United States will continue to fall behind countries that actually consider the education of their children to be one of the most important ways a country can invest in itself and sustain growth and innovation and competitiveness around the globe.

So, let's continue to ramp up military spending, keep open tax loopholes that allow the very rich to escape the same tax burdens faced by the middle class, keep cutting education funding to ensure that millions of children are kept ignorant, so that they will grow up and vote for idiocy and stagnation, rather than becoming the kind of critical thinkers that will question their government and vote for innovation and progress, let the poor suffer the consequences of their poverty without support or programs to help them climb out of the hole in which they find themselves, allow sick children of poor and middle class families to suffer without adequate health insurance, while the rich enjoy the benefits of the best healthcare their money can buy (after all, they've got all that extra income from the Bush tax loopholes), suppress acceptance of diversity by continuing to deny marriage rights to loving gay couples and to insist that church dogma has any valid place in politics, make sure that no woman has the right to choose (again, ensuring that the cycle of poverty and ignorance continues, thereby providing the Republican party with more future voters), and do whatever we can to make sure that every single household has both a bible and a gun!

'Cuz that's an America in which I want my two little boys to grow up!

NOT!

And, for anyone who is saying that Republicans are as open to across-the-board reforms as Democrats, here's a quote I saw on MSNBC this week:

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, scoffed at the suggestion that "everything is on the table" in budget negotiations between the Obama administration and congressional leaders.
"The military budget is not on the table," he said. "The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else's lunch."

I'm going to go hug my boys, now. I hope they get to grow up in a country that models acceptance and tolerance, that recognizes that the Constitution was designed to be a set of living guidelines that are adapted as our country grows, and that invests in education and innovation and the health and happiness of its citizens. But, I admit that I'm feeling pretty discouraged right now...