Robert Reich: The Moral Question

What kind of country are we living in?

We're in the worst economy since the Great Depression -- with lower-income families and kids are bearing the worst of it -- and what are Republicans doing? Cutting programs Americans desperately need to get through it.

Local family services are being cut or terminated. Tens of thousands of social workers have been laid off. Cities and counties are reducing or eliminating their contributions to Head Start, which provides early childhood education to the children of low-income parents.

All this would be bad enough if the economy were functioning normally. For these cuts to happen now is morally indefensible.

When Republicans recently charged the president with promoting "class warfare," he answered it was "just math." But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality.

Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not.

President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are.