Republican members of the House of Representatives worked harder at killing the health care program than they’ve worked at anything else in a long time.  As a matter of fact, they’ve worked hardly at all to solve problems that are creating a widening gap between the haves and have-nots in America.  They seem not to have noticed the greater numbers of homeless people all over America. They seem unaware that many children in America go to bed hungry. They seem not to have noticed the downsizing of workforces in American corporations… corporations which are continuing to do just fine but whose management strategy involves cutting some people out and increasing the work loads of the people they keep because they need to show a bigger profit margin in financial reports so they can continue increasing executive compensation. In this “recession” the people at top management levels have been doing very well. Executive salaries continue to rise not just steadily but in great leaps. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, a condition that reminds economics historians of what was happening in the 20s before the start of the Great Depression. Annie Lowrey reports in the business section of today’s New York Times that economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty are making an unnerving comparison between the 1920s and now. In 2012 the top 10% of earners took home more than 50% of the county’s total income.  One fifth of the income was taken home by the top 01% of earners. The income figures of the wealthiest citizens clearly indicate that America has entered another gilded age, a term used to describe the U.S. just before the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Congress has taken no action to strengthen financial conditions for lower and middle income families and individuals.  A cut in the food stamp program has moved many families closer to homelessness and hunger. Instead of working to make health care more affordable for poorer citizens, this congress has tried hard to undo the President’s Affordable Care Act. Congress has deliberately increased the misery of abject poverty for America’s poorest citizens. 

Am I  not interpreting fairly what I think I am seeing and hearing from the most conservative Christian groups in the country? It seems that the clusters of individuals who are most enchanted by Tea Party rhetoric are also people who claim allegiance and devotion to Jesus whose unquestioned, clearest commitment was to relieve the suffering of the poor, the disenfranchised.