THAT BUDGET DEAL MAY NOT BE A REAL DEAL BECAUSE "THE DREAM LIVES ON"

When the Republicans say we are broke they confuse me because they then say we don't have a revenue problem. Like Hell we don't have a revenue problem. When the Republicans bend over and let Corporate America ( I mean Corporate World - after all I wasn't asleep when the United States Chamber of Commerce broke the law and let foreign funds corrupt Election 2010) we assured ourselves of a revenue problem.

It is unconscionable for the House Republican Conference to try to balance the budget by taking Elmo off the air. It is unconscionable for the Republican Conference to try to balance the budget by letting Big Coal and Big Oil go on a massive pollution spree. It is unconscionable for the Republican Conference to have voted against the Defense Appropriations Bill of the last Congress and to turn around and use the families of our troops as pawns in their despicable attempt to devastate America's Safety Net. That's the Safety Net Ronald Reagan promised to keep intact. It is unconscionable for the Republican Conference to inflict stress and fear on America's most vulnerable women by threatening to defund Title X. That is where American women of modest, or no, means go for basic health care. The Republican Conference has acted without conscience or concern for the least among us. Oh! Would that they could screw their courage to sticking point and stand so forthrightly against the monied classes which fuel their insanity.

They have no shame, they have nothing about which they should be proud. I pray on Judgment Day I am not standing near them lest I be wrongly considered.

We have been treated to political theatre of the highest order. These Republicans did not intend to shut down the Federal Government. Not now anyway. They intend to inflict pain on working people. They intend to pave a way back to power by brokering the most radical concepts of Voodoo Economics.

Let's set the record straight. Wealth does not trickle down. Wealth is congested at the top by the wealthy. That which trickles down is the reason we make emergency calls to the plumber.

The wealthy have purchased the Republican Party. The Republicans are willing to demagogue about anything as long as it benefits their wealthy masters.

In Election 2010 it was reported that Corporate America was sitting on the sidelines with about a Trillion Dollars. They had the Bush Era tax cuts. They were not using that money to create jobs. They were holding back, hoping for a Republican victory so that they could move back into the marketplace and cut another fat hog. Make no mistake about it Corporate America's last big binge took a quarter of all available wealth out of America.

Republicans don't want us to get a fair break. Republicans want the rich to get richer and the poor to pay the tab.

I have had a belly full of this Republican Bullshit! This budget deal may not yet be a budget deal because Senate Democrats and House Republicans and President Obama say it is. Two very angry parts of the equation may find this too bitter to swallow: the Tea Party and the House Democrats. I am not yet willing to concede this event as a path to prosperity. It does not appear to make America's working folk prosper.

In the words of the late Senator Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy: "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die." Amen, the dream lives on!

The Abortion Cases Part Five

Harris v. McRae launched a Constitutional challenge to Title XIX asking whether it violated the right to privacy, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, or the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.

Associate Justice Potter Stewart

Associate Justice Potter Stewart delivered the opinion for the Court's 5 to 4 majority in a case that brought a direct challenge to the Hyde Amendment. That amendment provides that no federal dollars will be spent to fund abortions.

Justice Stewarts opinion said Title XIX does not require a participating State to pay for those medically necessary abortions for which federal reimbursement is unavailable under the Hyde Amendment

Henry Hyde, author of the Hyde Amendment

The funding restrictions of the Hyde Amendment do not impinge on the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment held in Roe v. Wade, to include the freedom of a woman to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy.

The Hyde Amendment places no governmental obstacle in the path of a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy, but rather, by means of unequal subsidization of abortion and other medical services, encourages alternative activity deemed in the public interest. Cf. Maher v. Roe.

Regardless of whether the freedom of a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy for health reasons lies at the core or the periphery of the due process liberty recognized in Wade, supra, it does not follow that a woman's freedom of choice carries with it a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices. Although government may not place obstacles in the path of a woman's exercise of her freedom of choice, it need not remove those not of its own creation, and indigency falls within the latter category.

Although Congress has opted to subsidize medically necessary services generally, but not certain medically necessary abortions, the fact remains that the Hyde Amendment leaves an indigent woman with at least the same range of choice in deciding whether to obtain a medically necessary abortion as she would have had if Congress had chosen to subsidize no health care costs at all.

Nor does the Hyde Amendment violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The fact that the funding restrictions in the Hyde Amendment may coincide with the religious tenets of the Roman Catholic Church does not, without more, contravene that Clause.

Appellees lack standing to raise a challenge to the Hyde Amendment under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The named appellees consisting of indigent pregnant women suing on behalf of other women similarly situated lack such standing because none alleged, much less proved, that she sought an abortion under compulsion of religious belief.

The Hyde Amendment does not violate the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Statutory analysis begins with a presumption of constitutional validity where the statutory classification does not directly impinge on a right or liberty protected by the Constitution. That presumption quickly fades if the classification is predicated on criteria that are "suspect," the Hyde Amendment is not predicated on a constitutionally suspect classification. Maher v. Roe, supra. Although the impact of the Amendment falls on the indigent, that fact does not itself render the funding restrictions constitutionally invalid, for poverty, standing alone, is not a suspect classification.

Where, as here, Congress has neither invaded a substantive constitutional right or freedom nor enacted legislation that purposefully operates to the detriment of a suspect class, the only requirement of equal protection is that congressional action be rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. The Hyde Amendment satisfies that standard, since, by encouraging childbirth except in the most urgent circumstances, it is rationally related to the legitimate governmental objective of protecting potential life.

Harris v. McRae was decided in 1980.