It is most unfortunate that when this administration began its budget cuts not many of us had any idea how many lives our taxes in the form of aid were saving in the world and how many lives would be lost by cutting that aid. We are talking about lost lives across the life span and globe including America. We knew some of our tax money was going to aid and health research and that was about it. Then this administration took a chain saw to aid and grants and now here is some of the results of damage done.  Thomas B Edsall who contributes weekly essays from Washington to the New York Times on politics and demographics provided data on the devastation wrought by this thoughtless, needless cruelty. I will quote him directly:

Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct Congressional approval. A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that … administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone.

Look at life in America right now and the lives we lead. Look at the wars we have recently started or supported with billions upon billions of our tax dollars being poured into the futility of it all. We have torn down nearly 1/4 of the White House to build a lavish ballroom. Our leaders fly around in palatial jets to play golf, attend fund raising parties, and self promote at will. The idea that our economy couldn’t handle the aid we were providing these vulnerable and dying human beings is obscenely ludicrous. America has its own neglected poverty and we have pulled the plug on a million and more lives we were positioned and able to save. The very idea of Pro-life seems to be a transparent self-deception in this current political climate

Urgent Proposal for Good

Let us pull the plug on hypocrisy instead of our lives. We can atone for this administration only through the reinvestment of our financial resources into something other than wars, lavish White House ballrooms in an age of global need, the stripping down of health care and on and on and on. We can and must restore and invest in the human and ecological needs of our planet and nation rather than the power passions. We have done better in the past and we can do much better in the future. We can afford life and we must take responsibility for this wealth by saving lives when we can. That would not only be good, for many of us that would be the only good.