Moral authority AWOL on tax cuts.(The Orlando Sentinel)

Byline: Myriam Marquez

We're at war, and the president's sense of "national sacrifice" is to stick it to America's poor by denying them Medicaid-backed health-care benefits. As for benefits for the rich, George W. Bush keeps stumping for tax cuts.

War and tax cuts? Deficit-spending, out of necessity, yes. But disproportionate givebacks to the richest people?

Aren't the quickie awarding of reconstruction contracts in Iraq to Halliburton and the other corporate buds of Vice President Dick Cheney enough of a national sacrifice right now?

Even moderate Republicans in Congress aren't buying Bush's economic medicine of slashing Medicaid and other programs for poor children, the elderly and the infirm while pressing forward with tax …