The Budget Suggests a Deficit in Leadership

This is another superb letter to the LA Times editor, from Thursday, January 27, 2005.

Where are the "moral values" of this administration in requesting $80 billion more for war ("Budget Deficit to Set Record," Jan. 26) while the people of South Asia die of disease, while Americans die from lack of healthcare and adequate food and housing, and the big scare about Social Security might leave all of us scrambling for a decent future?

It is embarrassing to be an American right now, as we are forced to listen to compassionate rhetoric in the face of merciless policy.

The values of true compassion, love, kindness and generosity are left on the page of every speech about hope and freedom.

It is hard to understand how so many good, honest, religious people can support this administration in light of the hard, sad facts facing us.

It is even harder to understand how Congress can just sit back and be walked on, like a nuisance of governance, in the path to inevitable acquiescence.

I can only wonder what that $80 billion, and the trillions over the coming years, could do to better the lives of so many suffering souls that this government is not only leaving behind but burying in the process.

Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
Pasadena