Editor:
To the hungry children, the elderly, the disabled and the low-wage workers trying to feed a family in the Third congressional district: Scott Tipton has a surprise for you!
You have already felt the reduction of a bare-bones diet by about 21 meals a month caused by the expiration of stimulus funding passed in response to Wall Street’s Great Recession. This cut amounts to about $5 billion. Now Tipton and his tribe have passed legislation providing for $39 billion in additional cuts.
So why would he resent your receiving $1.70 a meal for minimum nutrition? You see, Tipton thinks that you should lift yourselves up, like he did. He worked 16 hours a day at minimum wage, gathered wild berries and roots to feed his family and went to Fort Lewis College too. Yeah, sure.
You might wonder why not increase revenue to balance the budget, like rolling back the subsidies for the world’s wealthiest and most profitable companies collectively known as big oil? Or closing offshore tax havens?
Well, there are a couple of issues here. One is his innate opposition to the concept of our doing anything as a national community, from helping the disadvantaged to regulating rogue banks to protecting our air and water. The other is that the wealthy fund political campaigns and you don’t.
One in 10, or about 2,500 people in Tipton’s home county receive nutritional assistance. Do you suppose Tipton has ever volunteered at the Cortez Food Pantry or Grace’s Soup Kitchen, to see what it’s like to be chronically hungry? I really doubt it. It is so much easier to live in an ideological cocoon, and allow your ideology to set your policy.
Chris and Patty Insensee
Durango