Priorities: Guns or butter? Wall Street or Main Street?

The mid-term elections are around the corner. Time to ask whether your congressperson stands with you or the corporations when it comes to federal spending.

In Cleveland, where I come from, unemployment is devastating our community. People are demanding that their government, our government, recognize the suffering of families who have lost jobs and can't find work.

Will Washington tell my constituents and people like them, all over America, 'We have money for war but no money for the unemployed? We have money for military contractors but no money for the unemployed? We have money, billions, for corrupt foreign governments but no money for our unemployed in the United States? We havemoney for tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans but no money for the unemployed? Hundreds of billions for Wall Street but no money for the unemployed?'

Instead, the out-of-work, poor, and middle class get lectures on balancing the budget, lectures on pay-fors. What are people supposed to do when they don't have budgets because they don't have money? When they can't pay for food, shelter, and clothing? Yes, we need jobs, but people out of work can't find a job and they have to survive. People need unemployment benefits because they have to pay for their mortgage, their rent, their utility bills. So many Americans are hanging on by their fingertips. Some exhort our constituents, 'pull yourselves up by your boot straps.' What if you don't have money to buy boots?

-- Statement on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in support of legislation to extend emergency unemployment benefits.

See, also: Budget Deficit and Wars’ Cost Draw Fire on the Home Front by David Herszenhorn (New York Times 2010-07-02).