NATIONAL BUDGET: Reader encourages fasting protest

We don't have a budget crisis is Washington. We have a moral crisis. When Congress can seriously debate forcing veterans into homelessness and cutting food aid to pregnant women and children, while giving tax breaks to billionaires, something is very, very wrong. Those who will go hungry because of these cuts are largely invisible to decision-makers in Congress. By fasting in solidarity, we have an opportunity to make their suffering visible, and expose the immorality of this policy.

The heads of seven major progressive organizations, along with religious leaders from several major groups have launched an ongoing fast to protest the brutal and unjust budget cuts being debated in Washington. This began, when Rev. Jim Wallis and a group of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy launched a prayer fast to highlight what they called the "selective cruelty" in the budget debate. As word has spread, thousands more folks have begun fasting and praying as well.

Will you join in? You can fast for a day or part of a day, for a meal or a week - whatever you can do. I joined because, according to my faith and my conscience, letting children starve while giving handouts to giant corporations is wrong, plain and simple. And I feel compelled to speak out.

Also, email the different legislators that insist upon this immoral response to the budget crisis. Remind legislators that a better solution is to reduce subsidies to corporations that are making billions of dollars in profits and require them to pay their "fair share" in taxes as you and I do every year. It isn't fair that Warren Buffet, in his own admission, does not pay any taxes; nor does General Electric. And hundreds of other multinational corporations pay less than 15 percent of their income, considerably less than you and me.

Carolyn DuVall

Moses Lake