"First lady Laura Bush, wearing a Carolina Herrera two-piece suit, that she called "her new red suit", presents the White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room of the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005." (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
You will be glad to know that your Republican Congress is working hard for its tax-payer funded salary by waging a battle to ensure that the Holiday tree in the Capitol be called, not a Holiday tree, but a Christmas tree.
WASHINGTON - If it's a spruce tree adorned with 10,000 lights and 5,000 ornaments displayed on the Capitol grounds in December, it's a Christmas tree and that's what it should be called, says House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert, R-Ill., in a letter to the Architect of the Capitol, recommended that the annual Capitol Holiday Tree, as it has been called the past several years, be renamed the Capitol Christmas Tree.
On Dec. 8 Hastert will flip the switch to light the tree, a 65-foot Engelmann Spruce from the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico. On Tuesday workmen were erecting the tree on the West Front of the Capitol.
Meanwhile, your Christian Congress is working hard to make Scrooge proud by passing a budget with $50 billion in spending cuts that will hurt millions of poor and working-class Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Republican gift to the American people would cut: "food stamp benefits by about $45 a month for 225,000 people and .. 40,000 children would lose their eligibility for free meals at school."
The Republican Congress' Dickens Christmas budget includes revisions to Medicaid that would permit state governments to charge co-payments for emergency room visits by the poorest of the poor.
And we thought Katrina was bad. Picture Republican Scrooges turning desperately sick Americans away from Emergency Rooms.
Surely, Anderson Cooper will win a Pulitzer for this one.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert wants to call the Holiday tree a Christmas tree, but what will he call a budget that cuts Medicare, Medicaid, child support, welfare and even nutrition benefits for the poor?
Perhaps a better question is: What will we call Hastert?
Hat tip to Think Progress
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